Wilderness EMT

Wilderness Emergency Medical Technician (WEMT) is a type of wilderness emergency medical training that better equips licensed healthcare providers, who typically function almost exclusively in urban environments, to better stabilize, assess, treat, and protect patients in remote and austere environments until definitive medical care is reached. Despite the term, WEMT training is available and geared not just to the EMT, but also the Paramedic, Pre-Hospital Registered Nurse, Registered Nurse, Physician Assistant, and Medical Doctor. After all, without an understanding of the applicable gear, skills, and knowledge needed to best function in wilderness environments, including a fundamental understanding of the related medical issues more commonly faced, even an advanced provider may often become little more than a first responder when called upon in such an emergency. WEMT training and certification is similar in scope to Wilderness Advanced Life Support (WALS) or other courses for advanced providers such as AWLS (Advanced Wilderness Life Support), WUMP (Wilderness Upgrade for Medical Professionals), WMPP (Wilderness Medicine for Professional Practitioner), and RMAP (Remote Medicine for Advanced Providers). Unlike more conventional emergency medicine training, WEMT places a greater emphasis on long-term patient care in the backcountry where conventional hospital care can be many hours, even days, away to reach. Some of the main providers of Wilderness EMT training in the United States include SOLO, True North Wilderness Survival School, the Wilderness Medicine Institute at (National Outdoor Leadership School), Wilderness Medical Associates (WMA), Aerie Backcountry Medicine, Center for Wilderness Safety, and Remote Medical International.

Near the end of the 19th century, volunteer organizations such as St. John Ambulance began teaching the principles of first aid at mining sites and near large railway centers. By the dawn of the 20th century, additional organizations such as the Boy Scouts and the American Red Cross began teaching first aid to lay people. Over the years, these organizations trained hundreds of thousands of people in the elements of providing assistance until definitive care could be arranged. The training in these courses assumed that definitive care was nearby and could be delivered quickly. Eventually there was a realization that this training, while valuable, needed to be supplemented and/or revised to deal with the extended time and limited resources inherent when a medical crisis occurs in a wilderness setting. In the 1950s organizations such as The Mountaineers began developing training programs that addressed these special needs. In 1966, the US Government, through the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act, gave the Department of Transportation (DOT) responsibility for creating a national Emergency Medical Services System (EMS). From this program came the standardized curriculum for the position of Emergency Medical Technician (EMT). The first Wilderness EMT course was taught in 1976 to help EMTs in Colorado adapt their skills and knowledge when working with Search and Rescue teams. By 1977 organizations such as Stonehearth Open Learning Opportunities (SOLO) were offering specialized Wilderness First Aid training to their instructors. Meanwhile the DOT EMS program recognized a need to develop standardized training for "first responders" such as truck drivers, policemen and fireman who could lend assistance during the initial part of "golden period" until an ambulance with an EMT arrived.

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