[Ansteorra-chirurgeon] OT: Wilderness Training opportunity

[Richard Threlkeld]

I have just arranged for a Wilderness EMT Upgrade course in Estes Park in
April. The practice rescues and treatments will be in the Rocky Mountain
National Park. This will generate both ASHI Wilderness EMT Upgrade
Instructor status for those who are ASHI Instructors and WEMSI
certifications (Wilderness Emergency Medical Society Instructor). This will
allow you to teach Wilderness First Aid, Wilderness First Responder, and
Wilderness EMT upgrade courses.

It will be at the end of April (date not firm yet) and will take 8 days (7
very full days of the upgrade course and 1 day of instructor upgrade). The
cost is not firm but will be $500-$700 US including room and board (at the
local YMCA) and all materials. Transportation to Estes Park is not included,
but we can probably get a van or two at a group discount to get from the
airport to the training location. There are a couple of "tracks" available
for people with different backgrounds. For instance, MDs have some common
classes then a different set of specialty classes. My wife and some friends
will be camping in the park. You may bring people to join them, but you will
not be available for virtually any part of the 8 days.

The instructor is a flight paramedic with many advanced certs. He is the
medical officer for Rocky Mountain National Park. He is an ACLS, PALS, ATLS,
PHTLS-advanced, etc instructor. In November he is going to be in Central
America training guides in Dive Medicine. In December he will be in Africa
training Mountain Climbing guide who will be leading expeditions on
Kilimanjaro and guides in the Serengeti. In May, he is training all the Park
Rangers in Wilderness First Aid.

He says he will be adding quite a bit of advanced assessment to the base
course. Though none of this is required for any Chirurgeon function, better
assessment skills can only help your patients and do not imply any advanced
procedures. The primary difference between our standard first aid and CPR
courses and the Wilderness versions is the expected time until advanced
medical help can reach you. Standard courses figure on 12-15 minutes until
an ambulance is on site. So you learn enough to stabilize a patient for
about 20 minutes until the guys with better training and better equipment
show up. In the wilderness, you can expect hours to days so you must learn
to stabilize patients for a much longer time. 

In some cases, the treatment of a group of problems to stabilize for 20
minutes is the same for all of the group. If you have to stabilize them for
2 days, you may have to treat each of them differently so you need better
assessment skills.

I'll have the exact information in a week or so, but I wanted to get some
idea of who might be interested in this course. The requirement is you must
have a certification or license for EMT-B or above that is current by the
time of the course. If you are an ASHI instructor, you will be upgraded on
completion. In any case, you will become a WEMSI. Please email me with you a
description of your certs/license (so he can figure out how many in the
tracks) and any date conflicts (as he may be able to move it to either of
the last two weekends). If you expect to bring non-participants, please tell
me how many so we can handle the transportation to the park.

You may forward this as you like as long as you forward all of it. If the
response on the Chirurgeon lists is not too large, I'll post it to other
lists where medically trained people might lurk.

Caelin on Andrede, MC
Richard Threlkeld, ASHI Instructor Trainer