Description

Stop The Bleed and Basic Medical & Trauma Response

You are driving home when you come across a wreck. A friend gets hurt on a hike. Someone working beside you suffers a serious cut. You have called for help, but you are still the person standing there. What do you do while you wait?

This hands-on medical training course at The Survival University gives you a place to work through that question before it involves someone you care about. Taught by firefighter and paramedic Tyler Bolten, the class combines clear instruction with time to handle equipment, practice skills, and work through realistic situations. You will learn to recognize immediate problems, organize your response, and help an injured person while additional care is on the way.

Choose Stop The Bleed for $125 or the full-day Basic Medical & Trauma Response course for $250. Both options start at 10 a.m. The full day includes Stop The Bleed, followed by broader medical training and practical exercises. You only need to book the option you want.

2027 class dates and location

Choose from February 27, April 3, July 20, and September 3, 2027. Each date offers Stop The Bleed only or the full-day Basic Medical & Trauma Response course.

All classes take place at Mountain Camp, 71 Monarch Drive, Cripple Creek, Colorado. Check-in begins at 9 a.m. Mountain Time, and instruction starts at 10 a.m. Please read our Mountain Camp driving directions before you travel and follow the recommended route to camp.

Stop The Bleed

A serious bleeding injury can happen on a trail, at work, around the house, or on the road. Knowing where the first aid kit is helps, but you also need to know what to do with it. Our Stop The Bleed class focuses on recognizing life-threatening bleeding and using direct pressure, wound packing, and tourniquets to help control it.

The morning includes the Stop The Bleed course instruction and hands-on skills, along with additional coached practice and application. You will have opportunities to work with the equipment, ask questions, repeat techniques, and receive feedback from an instructor who uses these skills in emergency response. That extra practice helps turn an explanation you understood into a task you have actually performed.

• Recognizing life-threatening bleeding and calling for help.
• Applying direct pressure and using pressure dressings.
• Packing an appropriate wound with training materials.
• Applying a tourniquet and checking your work.
• Working with a partner and communicating during an emergency.
• Applying bleeding control skills in short practice scenarios.

Stop The Bleed students finish after completing the morning instruction and practice. Students who successfully complete the required course instruction and hands-on skills receive a Stop The Bleed course completion certificate through the instructor. Full-day students continue with the additional medical and trauma response training.

Full-day Basic Medical & Trauma Response

Controlling bleeding is one part of helping an injured person. You may also need to recognize a breathing problem, protect someone from the cold, support an injured limb, or decide whether moving them would help or create another problem. The full-day course brings those decisions together and gives you time to practice responding as part of a group.

This class is designed for people who may find themselves first on scene in everyday life or outdoors. Hikers, parents, hunters, drivers, outdoor workers, and people who simply want to be more prepared can all benefit from practicing these skills. No previous medical training is required. Tyler explains the concepts, demonstrates the techniques, and works with students as they apply what they are learning.

The pace is based on the group’s experience, questions, and progress with the skills. Some techniques take more practice than others, and the instructor can adjust the order and time spent on a subject to support the class. Plan for a full day if you choose the complete course. Breaks, lunch, and the finish time remain flexible.

Recognizing the situation and organizing your response

Before you approach an injured person, you need to understand what is happening around them. Traffic, fire, electricity, unstable ground, and bodily fluids can all affect how you respond. The class covers assessing the scene, requesting help, and communicating useful information so that your efforts support the response already underway.

Tyler introduces MARCH as a framework for organizing trauma priorities. It gives students a way to think through severe bleeding, airway and breathing concerns, circulation, and head injury or temperature-related problems. You will discuss what you are seeing, what needs attention, and how to keep assessing the person as the situation changes.

• Scene assessment and recognizing hazards.
• Personal protection and exposure to bodily fluids.
• Calling emergency services and communicating location and patient information.
• Consent and the general purpose and limits of Good Samaritan protections.
• Using MARCH to organize an initial trauma assessment.
• Recognizing changes in responsiveness, breathing, and circulation.

Basic emergency care and supporting an injured person

Once you recognize a problem, the next question is what you can do with the training and supplies available. The full-day class introduces basic airway positioning, CPR concepts, recognition of shock, and care for heat or cold exposure. Head, neck, and spine concerns are discussed alongside the decisions involved in protecting someone and avoiding unnecessary movement.

Wound care and splinting give students additional ways to help while waiting for professional care. Tyler uses the PAWS framework to introduce pain, antibiotics, wound care, and splinting, with practical work focused on comfort, protecting wounds, and supporting injured limbs. Medication discussions provide context for further medical care; this introductory course does not teach students to prescribe or administer antibiotics.

• Basic airway positioning and recognizing breathing problems.
• Introduction to adult and infant CPR concepts.
• Recognizing shock and monitoring an injured person.
• Reducing heat loss and recognizing heat-related illness.
• Head, neck, and spine considerations.
• Basic wound care, dressings, and splinting.
• Communicating observations and care provided to arriving responders.

Any demonstration of airway adjuncts or assisted ventilation uses training equipment and introduces the role of those tools. The course provides introductory medical education, rather than a qualification to perform advanced medical procedures.

Drags, carries, and patient movement

An injured person may need to be moved away from an immediate hazard, or they may be better served by staying where they are until additional help arrives. Students explore that decision and practice communicating and coordinating a move. The emphasis is on understanding the situation, the patient’s needs, the available help, and the physical demands of the technique.

Tyler introduces selected drags and carries from his outline, along with webbing-assisted movement and improvised carrying systems. Practice is supervised and adapted to participants’ abilities, allowing students to work on technique and teamwork without being expected to lift beyond their capacity.

• Distinguishing urgent movement from a planned patient move.
• Selected one-person and assisted drags and carries.
• Webbing-assisted carries and improvised stretcher concepts.
• Coordinating movement and communicating with a team.
• Recognizing when to leave a patient in place or request more help.

Putting the skills into practice

Practical scenarios give students a chance to connect individual skills with the decisions surrounding them. Exercises draw from situations in Tyler’s outline, including hiking accidents, traffic accidents, and simulated gunshot injuries. You will work with other students to recognize hazards, request help, assess the injured person, and respond with the equipment and skills available.

Instructor feedback is part of the exercise. The group discusses what was noticed, what was overlooked, how clearly people communicated, and what could work better on another attempt. Students can ask questions and work through unfamiliar tasks while there is an instructor beside them. These are medical response exercises with simulated injuries and no live-fire component.

Your instructor

Tyler Bolten is a career firefighter and nationally registered paramedic whose background includes thousands of 911 responses, tactical emergency medicine, hazardous materials response, and technical rescue. He is an instructor in Stop The Bleed, CPR, and Advanced Wilderness Life Support, and served in the U.S. Coast Guard and Army Reserve. His experience helps connect the course material with the situations students could encounter outside the classroom. Read Tyler’s instructor profile.

Enrollment and course completion

Stop The Bleed is $125 per person. The full-day Basic Medical & Trauma Response course is $250 per person and includes the entire Stop The Bleed portion. Check-in begins at 9 a.m. Mountain Time, and instruction starts at 10 a.m. Bring a packed lunch if you are staying for the full day.

Both options include a Stop The Bleed course completion certificate when the required instruction and hands-on skills are successfully completed. The full day adds introductory medical and trauma response training. Separate CPR, Wilderness First Aid, Wilderness First Responder, and professional medical certifications are not included.

For a longer course focused on caring for people in remote settings, explore our Wilderness First Aid course. This course focuses on immediate response and practical steps you can take to help an injured person until additional care is available.