This past weekend CBMG Guides & WMI of NOLS Instructors Billy Rankin & Jayson Simons-Jones held the first ever CBMG sponsored wilderness medicine training course, by offering a 3-day Wilderness First Responder Recertification Course. The WFR curriculum is a 72 hour wilderness medicine training that is the industry standard for all professional guides, educators, and instructors in the outdoor industry.

The course covers large amounts of medical topics and skills, such as: patient assessment, fracture management, cardiac emergencies, spinal injury management, altitude illness, diabetes, CPR, and a host of other theory and practical skill sets relating to common trauma, medical, and environmental emergency scenarios. The Wilderness Medicine Institute of NOLS is the premier provider in wilderness medicine training, having helped develop and refine the curriculum and recertification standards for the industry over the past 2 decades.

Everyone that holds a current WFR certification is required every 3 years to re-certify through this intensive scenario based format, in which folks must pass a written exam and demonstrate competency in a variety of practical skill sets also. This weekend’s recert course followed just this format, and was stacked with a full enrollment of 30 folks that came to Crested Butte to enjoy the incredible surroundings under beautifully clear and cloudless autumn skies in Colorado.

Folks descended upon Crested Butte from all over the state and beyond, and from a variety of different outdoor professions ranging from river guides, school teachers, camp counselors, mountain guides, NOLS & Outward Bound instructors, and government agency field workers. After a long an intensive weekend of three 9-hour days of wilderness emergency medicine scenarios, all 30 students left freshly WFR-Recertified for another 3 years.

Look for more WFR-Recert Courses and some other wilderness medical course types to be offered by CBMG as the seasons unfold in the future.

Congrats to all the course participants for a super fun and super good course, we hope you never have to use any of these skills, but we feel good knowing everyone out there is in good hands if you need to. C-ya all again in 3 years time.

— Your Instructors , Billy & Jayson

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 9th, 2008 at 10:31 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.