Wilderness first aid

A wilderness medical emergency is a medical emergency which takes place in a wilderness or remote setting which is at least 60 minutes away from definitive care (hospital, clinic, etc.) and presents unique challenges that may require specialized skills, treatment techniques, and knowledge in order to manage the patient for an extended period of time before being evacuated.

These are incidents which produce an elevated number of injuries, such as blizzards, earthquake, avalanche, landslide, floods and forest fire. Triage is a concern as well as location of victims who may be in dense foliage, rocky and remote locations or covered in mud, snow and debris. Helicopters are used to access remote locations during natural disasters. In other instances, mass casualties have resulted when parties of climbers or explorers suffer the adverse consequences of human error, with or without complications from inclement weather.

Transporting an injured person out of the wilderness on a stretcher can be a difficult exercise requiring considerable manpower. It is advised that at least one person stay with an injured party and that no one attempt to seek help by travelling alone over inhospitable terrain.

Wilderness first aid (WFA) is the specific discipline of first aid which relates to care in remote areas, where emergency medical services will be difficult to obtain or will take a long time to arrive.

Locating the victim precedes assessment and intervention and in the case of wilderness response is often a difficult matter. Specialists in white water rescue, mountain rescue, mine disaster response and other fields are often employed. In some cases, emergency extrication procedures at incidents such as automobile accidents are required before assessment is possible. Only once the location of the victim has been determined, a trained responder has been dispatched and successfully reached the victim, can the ordinary first aid process begin. Assessment is then enabled and it follows carefully specified protocols which have been refined through a long process of evaluation.

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