Managing risk and taking care of accidents in the wilderness

March 28, 2024 5:17 PM

"Wilderness Medicine Wednesday" is a series of ten-minute YouTube videos by Brett Friedman, a wilderness first aid instructor and a former paramedic. So far he's covered snakebites, hypothermia (including demonstrating the effects of mild hypothermia on himself), ticks, and CPR in the backcountry. In longer videos he's shared his perspective on other YouTubers' recordings of their wilderness mishaps, such as a burn and a hiking misadventure.
posted by brainwane (10 comments total)

I love these, thank you.
posted by metametamind at 5:29 PM on March 28 [3 favorites]

Oh neat, thank you! I actually spent the weekend before last taking a two-day very intense wilderness first aid class and it was great. I do not in fact spend much time hiking or in outdoorsy pursuits but the working definition of wilderness used was anywhere more than an hour away from definitive care, i.e. a hospital, and that's what I want to be prepared for. Especially with the intensifying effects of climate change I worry that, for example, there will be a flood and we'll be cut off from the ambulance and someone in my neighborhood will break their leg and if that happens now I know what to do. I think learning as much of this stuff as possible is a great way to build and care for your community and it's always cool to learn new stuff. Thank you for posting!
posted by an octopus IRL at 6:21 PM on March 28 [6 favorites]

This looks super useful. I certified a few years back and lately it's hard to find nearby classes to recertify.
posted by leslies at 7:21 PM on March 28 [1 favorite]

You both might be interested in this recent post about quizzes to help check wilderness medicine knowledge and keep fresh!
posted by brainwane at 7:25 PM on March 28 [1 favorite]

Wow, I did a ton of wilderness first aid training when I was a teenager in boy scouts, but it hasn't occurred to me to do any refreshers on it. I should look around and see what classes are offered in this area.
posted by hippybear at 7:28 PM on March 28

Yes! hippybear there's a ton of stuff out there: NOLS. You can get wilderness emt certified. Much better than BSA badge.
posted by leonard horner at 7:59 PM on March 28 [3 favorites]

Friedman is a NOLS Wilderness First Aid instructor and frequently refers to the NOLS wilderness medicine textbooks (and to Medicine for Mountaineering) in his videos.

Here's Friedman's video on the difference between NOLS's Wilderness First Aid and Wilderness First Responder courses -- WFA is 2 days, WFR is 10 days, and then there's Wilderness EMT which is a month-long course (more details). NOLS-affiliated instructors teach frequently in lots of US regions and also in several other countries (find a course).

an octopus IRL can I ask more about the class you took? And leslies what certification did you do?

[By the way, I think Friedman is much better known on YouTube by his username, AdventureOtaku, a choice he explained on his now-defunct blog.]
posted by brainwane at 4:18 AM on March 29

And, an octopus IRL, your reasoning is also a reason I recently got more into this topic. (Well, that and my increased outdoor activity, and my mother's decline and death and probably some kind of sublimated wish to help others where I could not, in the end, help her.)

I want to be able to provide first aid in a few different settings: the wilderness, my own home (or a friend's home or an office or a party), and the street/subway here in New York City. Some of the learning is pretty cross-applicable!

And: sometimes being in someone's home, even in a major city not during a disaster, might in fact be more than an hour from definitive care, because that person is really reluctant to incur the cost of pursuing that care.
posted by brainwane at 4:31 AM on March 29 [1 favorite]

I did the NOLS wilderness first aid class-
& Branewane is correct that the quiz linked above is a useful refresher. I do fieldwork with a group of climate scientists and they all had at least the first responder cert, one was a wilderness EMT. It takes a lot of time and money to maintain these certs, especially as someone without an employer to cover the cost but I’ve been v glad to have the Wilderness First Aid training. It’s much more based in improvising splints and understanding when to evacuate than a regular class- tremendously useful.
posted by leslies at 8:03 AM on March 29

an octopus IRL can I ask more about the class you took?

Yeah definitely! It was a two-day course from eight to seven both days (although it ran a bit over) run by MEDIC which is an offshoot of SOLO; we learned a lot especially about splits and initial patient assessment as well as stuff like hypo- and hyperthermia and also did a bunch of scenarios which were really helpful both for practicing the actual skills and for preparing ourselves for how we'd handle an emergency.

I want to be able to provide first aid in a few different settings: the wilderness, my own home (or a friend's home or an office or a party), and the street/subway here in New York City. Some of the learning is pretty cross-applicable!

Yup, this is exactly the same for me too; I'm a street medic so I did that training a few years ago and wanted to do some additional learning and refresh my skills. It's been helpful at protests/actions but it's also been super helpful to have some of this training just in regular life. One time I was going to an event that had asked for medic support and someone had fallen down the escalator on the Metro and I happened to be there with a huge bag of medical supplies and some rudimentary knowledge of what to do until the ambulance arrived. It was such a relief to other people around as well as me that I had that training and I was really glad to be able to be helpful. You never know when something is going to happen and it's a great service to everyone to be ready.
posted by an octopus IRL at 11:53 AM on March 29 [4 favorites]