A weekend of Wilderness First Aid

This weekend I took the wilderness first aid course offered by Wilderness Medical Associates here at UCSB. I certainly wasn't alone. There were 50 other participants in the class from all over the place. I decided to take the course because I'm out hiking all the time.

For Kilimanjaro, I'll be climbing with Kilimanjaro Sunrise. I checked out several other tour companies and some send their guides all the way to the States every three years to take the 80 hour Wilderness First Responder Course offered by the National Outdoor Leadership School. Other tour companies conduct their own in house bi-annual training where they bring in professional back country medical trainers to review any new medical protocols. So it looks like I'll be in good hands, yet it certainly won't hurt to be familiar with basic first aid and safety practices at 19,330 feet.

The instructors for our Wilderness First Aid course were Rod Tucknott, Chuck Schonder, and Jeff Baierlein.  These guys have been everywhere and have done everything.

Rod is the director of the UCSB Adventure Programs and a lot of the students this weekend were wrapping up their requirements for UCSB's Leadership Training Program.

We also had a physician in our class and several Boy Scout troop leaders.
The first day was long, but fun and informative. I arrived at about 7:55am, left at 7:00pm, and we only got out about an hour earlier on the second day.

The course structure includes lectures, exercises inside and outside, roll playing and practice. If it weren't for all the moving around, there would be no way we'd survive such a long day. As our instructor Jeff put it, "the mind can only absorb as much as the butt can withstand". Truer words have not been spoken.


With practice and roll play an integral part of the course, we had a few opportunities to switch back and forth between being patients and responders.  The first few rounds were pretty mellow, with the patients pretending to have the signs of volume shock from a kayaking accident or potentially cracked ribs from a horse kick, but the third round on Saturday was far more dramatic with fake blood and fake throwing up (of real chewed up pretzels)!

I ended up being one of the injured D.I.C. heads (Disoriented, Irritated, Combative) which lead me to totally terrorize this poor undergrad Whitney Freedman from Chapman University. Incidentally, the thought of Chapman University makes me very home sick. I was born about a mile away at St Joseph's Hospital. Based on my scenario condition, a hospital was exactly where I should have been. Given the course, hopefully we'd all be more prepared to assess and stabilize the injured in the event of an emergency.

If you think you are going to get away with just injecting a little bit of saline into an orange or a tomato to get your anaphylaxis certification, think again.  There's Whitney coming after me with a pen not long after he had to roll up his sleeve and let me inject him with saline solution to get our anaphylaxis certification. If ever we have to inject epinephrine, we're ready, even though the give of the flesh is something that I don't think I'll ever get accustomed to.  You just have to go for it and make sure the person is seated just in case you hit a nerve.  Thoroughly freaked out yet?    

I am now the proud holder of a patch, a couple of stickers, and three certifications:

1. Wilderness Medical Associates' WFA certification
2. Anaphylaxis
3. Adult CPR certification

...all valid for three years, but please don't get hurt on my account.