# Wilderness/Remote EMT Course Providers



## BadJoke88 (Aug 24, 2015)

Hello All,

So I'm trying to chart out my (hopefully soon) schooling and would love to attend one of the Wilderness EMT courses. However, there are quite a few out there.  I've gone through Wilderness Medical Associates, Remote Medicine's, National Outdoor Leadership School's, Aerie's, and Stonehearth Open Learning Opportunity's sites. I've also Googled what I could and searched through this site's threads as well. Eventually I hope to take one of the Wilderness Advanced Life Support classes through one of those providers, but that's several years off yet. If anyone has any information or has attended any of these I would welcome your input and views!

Paul


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## EBMEMT (Aug 25, 2015)

Local. SOLO instructed seems to be good.  Only had a short course from him.  Also worked with him on a few incidents.


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## EpiEMS (Aug 31, 2015)

I took my original EMT & WEMT through SOLO. It was a fantastic - and fairly quick - experience, and I feel like they teach very well. Instructors are experienced, smart, and well-educated. My EMT instructor happened to be a former science teacher, of all things, so that was awfully nice. There is also quite a bit of MD involvement, which is lovely to have.


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## EMTaylor (Feb 12, 2016)

I can't really give much first hand information on this, but I've been looking into some of these programs myself. A good friend of mine suggested I go through WMA since I'm up in New England. He said it is a fantastic program and he has certainly put much of what they taught him into use when he hikes and such. I was looking into their program because it seems like one of few with a course for people who already are certified in the EMS field. I am likely going to do their course in May and if I do go through with it, I will certainly give you an update. 

If anyone else has info/experience with WMA, I'd love to know as well.


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## Summit (Feb 13, 2016)

I've heard positive things about WMA.

Other programs to look at are Colorado Mountain College and Desert Mountain Medicine.


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## MrJones (Feb 14, 2016)

You can't go wrong with one of the big 3 - SOLO, WMA and WMI. For the record, I did my WEMT at SOLO's Conway NH campus and can highly recommend it.


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## Nomadicflyer (Feb 16, 2016)

Heading to WMI/NOLS in Wyoming next month for their 28 day EMT/WEMT program, hoping it will be a good refresher for me.  Anyone else going?


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## Summit (Feb 16, 2016)

$4000 is one hell of an expensive refresher. You can go to paramedic school for that kind of money.


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## joshrunkle35 (Feb 16, 2016)

I did my WEMT through a semester long college course at Columbus State Community College in Columbus, OH. It's was a 5 credit hour (semester credit hours...probably like 9 credits on quarters) course that was 50% search and rescue and 50% wilderness EMS. Both portions were very in depth. It was a total of about 120-130 hours and was about 60% in the field and 40% in the classroom.


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## Carlos Danger (Feb 16, 2016)

About 5 years ago I took the 3-day Advanced Wilderness Life Support course. This was just kind of a "how to apply the medicine that you already know to a wilderness situation". I've also done numerous survival trainings in the military and at my HEMS jobs, which usually end up covering similar material.

I thought the AWLS curriculum itself it was ok, but nothing I'd want to invest much time or money into. What was really cool about it was that there were mostly physicians in the class and a handful of them had actual expedition medicine experience (one had just gotten back from a couple months at Everest base camp), so some really good discussion was had. But if those docs hadn't been there I think the course itself would have been really lukewarm.

No doubt you pick up some interesting tidbits in these courses, and they can be fun, but my feeling has always been that what they cover is 90% common sense. At least for someone who is already an experienced provider and also already comfortable out in the woods.


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## Summit (Feb 16, 2016)

I think for the urban EMT the number one benefit of a wilderness course is teaching to think about patient care in timeframes of longer than the next 5 minutes or 30 minutes and instead think about what you should do now to make sure you are in a good situation in a few hours or tomorrow.

I think the biggest pitfall of WEMT courses (I've seen them from many providers, big name and small) is too much course time spent on wiz-bang improvised zebra solutions. Yea you can spend 20 minutes showing the class how to tie a rope litter and 1 student out of 20 classes of 20 students each will remember how to do it but then never use it in their entire career.

I do think $4000 is an insane price for WEMT. CMC has several CO campuses that offer a combined Wilderness EMT upgrade and NREMT refresher course that is 50 hours and $860 for out of state, or $246 in state!

DMM has full WFR 80 hour courses (this counts as a NREMT recert and a WEMT card) for $660.


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## Carlos Danger (Feb 16, 2016)

Summit said:


> I think the biggest pitfall of WEMT courses (I've seen them from many providers, big name and small) is too much course time spent on wiz-bang improvised zebra solutions. Yea you can spend 20 minutes showing the class how to tie a rope litter and 1 student out of 20 classes of 20 students each will remember how to do it but then never use it in their entire career.



Exactly. That's just stuff you need to figure out how to improvise if the situation ever arises, based on common sense, available resources, distance that needs to be covered, etc.


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