Wilderness First Responder

I just finished an intense 9-day/80 hour wilderness first responder course through NOLS WMI.  It was hosted by UT RecSports in Gregory gym, so Manuel, Hannah, Ellie, Sebastian, Brad, and I assisted some with the day-to-day running of the course in addition to taking the course.

The course prepared us to handle medical situations in the back-country for extended periods of time (while an evacuation is being prepared), as well as how to decide when an evacuation is necessary, when it should be rapid, and how to communicate our findings and needs regarding the injured patient to front-country 911 operators.

We learned about the patient assessment system, which provides a guide for us to follow which assessing the patient.  And then we practiced applying it in many scenarios as we learned about various medical issues and illnesses that might occur while leading a trip in the back-country.  Prevention was a recurrent theme during the class - it's always easier to prevent an injury or illness.  Along these lines, we learned about how to encourage good camp hygiene (wash hands and pots adequately, isolate illness) and personal care (dry socks, foot checks).

I'm going to completely rebuild my personal first aid kit - especially for international trips. In both Turkey and Peru I suffered non-trivial injuries to a foot and hand, respectively. In both cases, caring for the wounds required multiple trips to pharmacies where it was difficult to convey the types of supplies we wanted (and these supplies were sub-standard, in both cases). Hence, I plan to stock my first aid kit with at least sterile gauze, conforming gauze bandages, occlusive semi-permeable dressings, 1" athletic tape, an irrigation syringe, wound closure strips, Tincture of Benzoin, moleskin, gloves, and two triangular bandages (and certainly more items for some trips).