The 2009 Wilderness Risk Management Conference (WRMC) will be held in Durham, NC between October 14-16, 2009. The objective of this conference is to effectively educate outdoor/medical professionals and enthusiasts in relieving risks that may occur in the wilderness. This workshop is sponsored by NOLS, Outward Bound, and Student Conservation Association (SCA).

Wilderness Medical Associates is excited to announce that some of our own instructors (Dr. David Johnson, Bill Frederick, Deb Ajango, and Jon Tierney) will be conducting various workshops at the conference. Leading up to the conference, we will be periodically featuring these instructors and  topics included in their workshops on our blog.

Resources and Updates About the Wilderness Risk Management Conference:

• View a list of the WRMC workshops
• WRMC Website
• Follow WRMC on Twitter
• Follow Wilderness Medical Associates on Twitter
• Subscribe to WMA blog via email
• View the invitation letter from Chair

Four hundred delegates from 28 countries around the world converged on Halifax, Nova Scotia, at the end of last week (14-15 November) for the International Sail Training and Tall Ships Conference 2008. Organized by Sail Training International in collaboration with the American Sail Training Association (the biggest of STI’s 25 member national organizations), the conference had an overall rating from delegates of close to ‘Excellent’. Sail training vessel operators from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and throughout both Europe and North America attended, along with representatives of host ports from Europe, the Caribbean and North America. The conference comprised a mix of plenary sessions for all delegates and an á la carte menu of 16 workshops. These covered a range of topics from dealing with the current ‘economic tsunami’ and navigating the regulatory seas, to recruiting trainees, the development of a successful sail training program, and the ingredients of a successful Tall Ships event. The conference also included a session for the Sail Training International Youth Forum, attended by 36 young sail trainers.

Read Full Article HERE

“Any sickness at altitude is altitude sickness until proven otherwise.”
-Thomas E. Dietz

I finally made it to our snow covered tea house high in the Mount Everest region despite a 20 hour flight across the ocean, a baggage delay in Kathmandu, a terrifying commuter flight to the Lukla airstrip, and a four day trek to 13,000 feet. But I made it and it only took 7 days.

It’s winter in the Himalayas and I am glad to be here.

I am here to teach my 3rd annual Extreme Altitude Medical Training (EaMT) course.

Twenty four of the brightest Sherpa Guides have congregated in PaNuru Sherpa’s lodge in Phortse, Nepal, a small subsistence farming village of 40 stone and mud homes and its 100 residents, to learn about wilderness medicine. They are all here because they want to learn how altitude affects the human body. They have seen it, felt it, and suffered from it. Some have even carried the sick and dead off the mountain.

My goal is to teach these yak herders, subsistence potato farmers and tea house operators and now trekking and climbing guides how to prevent, recognize and treat Acute Mountain Sickness (AMS). AMS kills, it’s preventable, and that is why the EaMT program exists.

The minute anyone steps foot off the airplane in Luka, Nepal, the drop off point for thousands of visitors to the Mt. Everest region, one is thrust into a potentially life threatening medical situation. AMS could be avoided if the local Sherpa people knew what to look for.

It is a monumental task to travel half way around the world and teach a high altitude course to a group of Sherpa’s whose native language is Sherpa and national language-- Nepali. Over the past five years, after teaching a similar course for the African guides on Mt. Kilimanjaro and here, I have designed an altitude medicine course to meet and accommodate the Sherpa guides special language needs. I use the WMA approach to teaching. If a student learns how and why the body works then they can recognize when something goes wrong with it.

I took a risk with the EaMT project. Funding and monetary support is sparse (much thanks to Dr. Johnson and WMA for their support of the program!). As an educator, I can barely afford to pay my own bills, yet I still find a way to support this project. I was the only instructor for three of the five courses. This year a powerhouse team of female educators; Everest ER Doc Luanne Freer, instructor extraordinaire Kristen Peterson, and Bozeman Nurse, Birgen Knoff all came to the rescue. We all teamed up with the Alex Lowe Charitable Foundation Khumbu Ice Climbing School (ALCF) to teach this course. The ALCF sent us their top 24 students who excelled in leadership, climbing and English skills from last year’s ice climbing school.

Five woman Sherpa’s participate in this course, up three from last year. This course provides another career opportunity for the Sherpa women. Perhaps they will use this knowledge to evaluate clients in their lodges or give them confidence to work at a local clinic. We asked two of the woman to come back next year and fill the role of EaMT assistant instructors.

I hear from the Sherpa grapevine that our teaching methods over the past three years are paying off. My former Sherpa students are recognizing and treating AMS in both their clients and porters. They are saving lives.

I am passionate about this EaMT course and I hope the program will continue. If you would like to support the project, log onto www.susanpurvis.com.

Oh, and by the way…..by the time I leave class, wait out travel delays in Lukla, and drop dead on my own pillow in Montana, another 7 days has gone by. But it was worth it.

June 17, 2008

As outdoor adventurers head into the backcountry for their summer vacations, they take themselves farther from the typical emergency medical response time available in the city. Savvy adventurers pack more than bug spray in their gear – they go armed with some level of wilderness or rescue medical knowledge. Environmental conditions like heat, cold, rain, distance or unstable terrain add considerable risk for both patient and rescuers when something goes wrong.

This week, the Union-Tribune's video health feature, San Diego Alive, demonstrates what goes into wilderness medical training by highlighting the group Wilderness Medical Associates (WMA).

Founded in 1981 to provide medical training and risk management to Outward Bound Schools, WMA offers courses at varying levels of intensity, including wilderness first-aid and wilderness first-responder. The courses cover the same essential issues as would urban medical care classes, such as wound management, asthma treatment and CPR. But they add the wilderness context, meaning definitive care can be hours or even days away.

During a recent wilderness first-responder training course, San Diego native Josh Jackson, a WMA instructor and program coordinator for UCSD's Outback Adventures Program, showed us some of the potential situations injured adventurers might be faced with, and how to deal with them.