Welcome to the Wilderness Emergency Medicine Course

I am an Emergency Medicine doctor with a special interest in austere environment's emergency medicine. I have worked in remote environments in the wilderness and mountains and on expeditions and love the outdoors. My desire to contribute to the development of emergency medicine in SA met with an obstacle when I saw the focus was on the more traditional aspects and curriculum of emergency medicine. This is understandably so as the specialty cannot develop without core content being developed. However, with my own passion for the esoteric parts of emergency medicine I decided to see what was out there for us in SA with regard to austere environment's emergency medicine. Unfortunately, wilderness emergency medicine is a very young branch of emergency medicine and great efforts were made by some of the great outdoor doctors from Wild Medix and Destination Medicine to offer courses in this regard. These courses were offered as first aid courses and the uptake has not been very promising. My goal then was to develop an intense and comprehensive Wilderness Emergency Medicine course that was accessible and affordable to most practitioners in the field of pre-hospital emergency medicine. Research into international course offerings showed that importing a course was a possibility, except for the costs involved that was mostly due to rand-dollar exchange rates. So, after chatting to several colleagues, I decided to develop my own course from scratch. The first step was to choose course content and develop a synopsis, which is now well developed. The next step is CPD / CEU accreditation including points for ethics to make it fairly meaningful, which is currently in process. I have also secured the services of an internationally experienced mountain climbing and rescue expert to deliver the mountaineering basics, an experienced paramedic with rescue and survival skills to assist with the wilderness component and a trauma surgeon with the same outdoor passion as me to assist with the medical component. The end result is a fantastic opportunity for anyone with a love for the outdoors and a passion for emergency medicine...the Wilderness Emergency Medicine course.