Getting Educated

We spent most of last week on the road, heading to McCall, ID for Wilderness First Aid class.  On the way, we stopped for a visit at my Dad’s place.  It was good to spend some time with them, and break up our trip a bit.  Neither of us had been to McCall, and it was fun to explore a new part of our corner of the country.  We saw, and smelled, lots of smoke from forest fires throughout our trip.  We’re hoping for rain to help contain the fires burning throughout the Pacific NorthWest.

The Wilderness First Aid class, put on by the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS), was a great learning experience for both of us.  We learned to asses the scene of an accident, how to quickly check someone for something life threatening, then how to take and measure vital signs, and gather a personal history of information pertinent to the situation at hand.  The two amazing instructors taught us how to formulate a plan based on this assessment.  We learned how to determine if we could keep on and monitor an injury or illness and when an injury or illness necessitates more experienced medical attention.  They gave us guidelines on how to plan on getting them to medical care, with the appropriate speed and urgency given their health situation.  We were given hands on simulations of many possible situations, and learned how to problem solve through a wide variety of possible injuries and illnesses.  These simulations showed us not only how to develop a “treatment” plan, but also how to read the scene, and solid bedside manner skills to keep a person calm and comfortable in a scary situation.  Our instructors, Nate and Cami, gave us great advice on how to build our first aid kit by including as many items that can perform many functions and focusing on principles of treatment to enable us to use whatever we have at hand to treat someone’s injury.  It was a great class, one that I wholeheartedly recommend for anyone that is going to be spending time in the outdoors where they won’t have mobile phone coverage or are a couple of hours from medical care.  The skills we learned could save a life.  Better than that, they focused on how to avoid most of the injuries or illnesses we looked at treating.  Avoidance is the best form of treatment.  While we are excited to learn all these great skills, we are even more grateful to learn how to recognize problems when they are small, and we can stop them from turning into a potentially life threatening situation.  We will practice our assessment skills to ensure we stay sharp.  These skill are only as good as the practice we put into them.  Great skills, taught by true experts in the field who are also great teachers that kept the subject matter light and the class involved.  We have now checked one more item off our Trip Preparation list.