TRAINING SCENARIO PHOTO

I’m in Glenmore Lodge in Scotland doing a 6-day course about Wilderness First Aid. 5 days into the course my brain is full of all sorts of things that can go wrong in a remote place where we are far from outside help! But hopefully I also have a much better idea of how to deal with it. On previous expeditions that I’ve been on, someone else has had good first aid experience, but neither Barry nor I have much knowledge. Now when we go to New Zealands’ Fjordland and are miles from a roadhead, I’ll be panicing everytime Barry gets a headache but I’ll be able to make much more informed decisions if something does go wrong, from dislocated fingers to a severe bang on the head! II’d recommend the course to anyone who is leading groups in remote situations, or who is planning a remote expedition where medical help is not on hand. There is even a diamond miner who works in Africa here, and amazingly a girl who i went to school with and havent’ seen since! The course is quite intense, most days are 10 hours of lectures, practicals and scenarios. Today in our pretend scenarios we had to deal with injuries including a woman who had fallen on her paddle and impaled herself on it causing it to go all the way through her body. The photos are of the scenarios – not real injuries! I’ll be writing an article about the course for ‘Ocean Paddler’ magazine ( which is a ‘Wilderness First Responder’ course run by Wilderness Emergency Medical Services Institute, WEMSI ( Europe) .

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