I spent this past weekend at the Cascade Welcome Center outside of Lake Placid taking a Wilderness First Aid class.  I haven't practiced medicine in any way since my EMT expired about 2004.  I once did take a Wilderness EMT class in the early 2000s at NOLS in New Hampshire, and I honestly thought that was the best class I ever took as it taught you how to improvise.

Now emergency medicine has changed a lot in the past 20 years.  Since COVID we have had lay person CPR move to hands only instead of the 15/2 or 5/1 I was originally trained on back in the mid 90's.  We now have AEDs all over the place and we are more awareness and acceptance of epi-pens, and now narcan is available to the public.  The AED and epi had made its way into EMT-B training before I expired, and narcan has been added since along with some other things.  They were all covered in the WFA class.

We also covered all the basic trauma treatment that we would see in the field like broken bones, falls, cuts, sprains/strains, etc.  We also covered many of the common medical issues we run in to like allergic reactions, toxins (snake/spider bites), pregnancy, appendix, cardiac, and even depression.  WFA, since you're hours if not days away from definitive care, allows you to do more treatment like cleaning wounds, giving otc meds, packaging to carry out, etc.  It still is a matter of go get help, but you can get the patient in a transport ready state, or even start the transport and meet the advanced aid along the way.

It was a lot that was covered in the 2 days.  We came out of it though with the WFA, CPR, and Epi certs all on one card, and all good for 3 years.  Being in this class has made me remember what I missed, so I just contacted the regional EMS group to inquire about renewing my long expired EMT, and if I do go through the class, I'll go back to NOLS and get my WEMT again, and look into what would be needed to help teach these types of classes.  I'll also look into joining a local SAR group to help with rescues.

With all that though, I uploaded my certs when I got home to the ADK website and knew I had completed everything except my 2nd co-lead of a B or higher hike.  Well, surprised that everything was approved by Monday afternoon, and the website said I was a level 3 trip leader.  Yay!!!  But, to be fair to my local chapter, I will do a second co-lead with ADK before I go putting in for bigger things.  That is scheduled for August 3.