Adib on a Wilderness First Aid course:
“Eight Wanderung members participated in the awesome Red Cross Wilderness Remote First Aid course. The course was 20 hours, on Friday night we were indoors and learned the basics of CPR, and got our training manuals. Saturday and Sunday we spent in Mundy Park doing hands on stuff in prefect conditions for a wilderness first aid course, cold, raining, and amazing instructors. Peter Ramsey, our instructor, was one of the people who collaborated on writing the red cross manual on remote wilderness first aid how cool is that, yes you can see his name in the Red Cross book!
We learned and practiced so many things other than basic CPR including how to deal with: hypothermia, broken bones, different types of wounds, possible head and spinal cord injuries and many more exciting things. I finally learned how to properly use a first aid kit.
The best part of course was the hands on scenarios our instructors set up, using theatrical make up that looked so real it made your heart beat fast. We dealt with scenarios involving bleeding people, all sorts of body parts, unconscious people hanging from trees, amputated thumbs, sucking chest wounds, pulling someone out of the lake and treating for hypothermia, dealing with shock, heart attacks, strokes, heat exhaustion. Most of the scenarios involved multiple causalities, and we had a very detailed night time scenario took about a couple of hours to get through.
We all walked away from the course with a much deeper appreciation for group dynamics and all the problems that can crop up when there is an emergency and many people involved. We are all much more confident in our ability to provide first aid. We also all felt that we would like everyone that we hike with to have this type of training.”
