Medic Minute – Volume 1

Medic Minute

Welcome to the first in Colorado Mountain Man Survival’s Medic Minute Series!  My name is Jeffrey and I’ll be the host for these.  Today I’m going to introduce myself and discuss my background.  Then we’ll get into the upcoming medical classes that we’ll be hosting and explain why these classes go hand in hand with our basic outdoor skills / modern survival.

As I said my name is Jeffrey and I’ve been a paramedic here in Colorado for almost three years with five years of expanded protocol Wilderness EMT-b experience before that.  I’ve worked everything from smaller clinics to very busy 911 systems to remote settings and search and rescue.  My real passion is wilderness medicine and studying how wilderness skills and medicine go together in the field.  Acute medical problems along with the exacerbation of chronic conditions, trauma and heat management crisis are some of the medical issues that can occur in the backcountry that can quickly deteriorate into life threatening emergencies.  We will discuss how to prevent these situations and how to deal with them when they arise.

We currently offer two wilderness medicine classes, the Wilderness Life Support class and the Basic Wilderness Life Support.  All of our classes are “stand alone” meaning that there is no prerequisite for any of these classes.  Our classes are structured and written by board certified physicians and professional educators and our teachings are based on the best recommendations from the University of Utah School of Medicine wilderness program.  We discuss how to prevent, assess, treat and evacuation patients from low-resource areas.

Our Wilderness First Aid class is a great weekend introduction to the individual with no or minimal medical training.  We discuss the basics of safety, patient assessments and the basic of managing the “ABC”s.  This class is written as a 16 hour class however, since we offer on-site camping, we extend each day by 2 hours to make it a 20 hour class.  Those extra four hours will be dedicated to critical medical skills that I think are under-taught.  Specifically, wilderness foot care and blister avoidance/management, common wild poison plants, and an expansion of the trauma lecture to include some modern “tactical” devices that have been taken from the military and mainstreamed into emergency medicine (tourniquets, hemostatic agents, chest seals, etc).

Our Basic Wilderness Life Support class is our wilderness first responder and is very in depth.  This class, at 80 hours, exceeds the standards established by NOLS/WFI.

Again because you’ll be staying on the property for the week we’ll have great opportunities for additional training.  Our property has terrain from flat valleys to steep aspen groves to vertical cliff faces and each will be used in our scenarios!  We make sure that you don’t get bored or suffer from DEATH BY POWERPOINT; these classes are fun, and engaging and get you hands-on quickly!  Some of the topics are airway management, envenomations, environmental emergencies, rapid trauma assessment, anaphylaxis treatment and intra-muscular injections, plus much much more!  This is our GOLD STANDARD CLASS for wilderness backcountry professionals, guides, SAR technicians, river guides and anyone that spends more time under the sky than under a roof!  Seven information-packed days will transform you from a newbie to your group’s go-to medic.  This class includes AHA CPR Certification “BLS for the Healthcare Provider”.

Whether you’re totally new to the first aid or a practicing physician we have something offer you!  We offer a discount package on our wilderness medical classes combined with our Basic Outdoor Skills / Modern Survival because we strongly believe that these skills go together to create a competent, safe, confident outdoorsman able to deal with and avoid emergencies.  When you purchase this package please note that you don’t have to take the classes back to back, you can break them into two different times to accommodate your schedule.

Thanks for reading my first Medics Minute!  I’ll be doing a write-up every week so stay tuned.

Next week we’ll be discussing hypothermia and cold injuries that you may encounter in the backcountry! ! Thanks again and stay safe!