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First Aid When Far from the Phone Here’s the scenario: You’re with and a group of friends on a back-country ski trip. Some are skiing ahead of the others. All of a sudden, you see your friends who had skied ahead lying down on the snow. You survey the landscape and discover that they tripped over a buried log. Some of the skiers look fine but others look like they’re injured. What do you do?
Foster teaches these types of skills in the wilderness first aid classes offered by Outdoors Unlimited. In addition to Standard First Aid and CPR, Foster instructs pupils on how to clean a wound in the wilderness, how to move spinal injured patients and how to prevent hypothermia. “Other than Outdoors Unlimited and the classes conducted by the Wilderness Medicine Institute, there’s not much in the Bay Area,” said Foster, adding that the classes have been offered for 12 years at UCSF. “We started the classes so our leaders on our trips and participants could have some needed first aid skills when involved in a wilderness adventure.” Outdoors Unlimited offers a range of outings, including backpacking, whitewater rafting and snowboarding. Wilderness first aid is offered as a 20-hour class, an 80-hour class, which involves a full weekend in the wilderness, and an all-day wilderness medicine seminar twice a year. The 20-hour course, called Wilderness Standard First Aid, will be held February 4, 7 and 8 and also April 20, 25 and 26. In the 80-hour course, participants do more hands-on training and spend a weekend in the Santa Cruz mountains. Red Cross Standard First Aid and Adult CPR certification are awarded upon successful completion of the course. Students who pass a take-home wilderness exam receive Outdoors Unlimited’s Wilderness Standard First Aid certification. Both classes are offered at a discount for UCSF students, faculty and staff. Involved with Outdoors Unlimited for 10 years, Foster said she became interested in wilderness first aid because she doesn’t like to feel unprepared. Taking a course, like the ones offered at Outdoors Unlimited or by wilderness medicine organizations, Foster said, is important because of the misinformation out there. “There’s an incredible amount of contradiction in books about what you’re supposed to do in an emergency,” she said. Foster has become a kind of resource center for wilderness first aid information over the years. “I love being a resource center for people because I personally believe that people who go out into the wilderness need to have some first aid training,” she said. Defining wilderness as being an hour or more away from “definitive health care,” Foster says there are three major principles in dealing with emergency situations. “First, stay calm and safe. Second, have good leadership, clearly defined before the trip begins. Third, do really good patient assessment. You need to have a system with thorough questions so you have all the pieces of the puzzle and can make good decisions from the information there.” A major component of the wilderness first aid classes is scenarios, in which some participants act as victims, complete with make-up for bruises and wounds, and the others must figure out how to stabilize the situation. Although it can be stressful, it is the best way to learn, Foster said. “In my experience, a mistake made in scenario is one you’ll never make again,” she said. Students learn how to deal with emergencies, ranging from minor injuries, such as sprains and bruises, to life-threatening ailments, from spinal injuries to snake bites. Foster said she’s had students who took the class and ended up using their skills in both urban environments, such as automobile accidents, and wilderness settings, such as ski accidents. “It gives people confidence that they do have the skills and ability to approach the scene,” she said. Outdoors Unlimited First
Aid Courses: By Paula Murphy 1st appeared 1/20/98 |
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“First
you need to determine what happened and how severe it
is,” said Bobbie Foster, first aid coordinator for
UCSF’s