**To sign up for this course: please register with the Wilderness Medicine Training Center at www.wildmedcenter.com. Please do not sign up using AAI's online registration form.

This nine-day, 72 hour course is taught by the Wilderness Medicine Training Center and designed in accordance with the practice guidelines established by the Wilderness Medical Society and the National Association of EMS Physicians.

The Wilderness First Responder course has been designed specifically to meet the needs of wilderness guides, expedition leaders, and outdoor instructors. It is the outdoor education and recreation industry's standard for wilderness medical training. It is the wilderness medicine training course for outdoor professionals...and the course you want your friends to have taken before you travel with them!

Maintaining spine stabilization while packaging a patient. Paul Nicolazzo

This medical course is rigorous, fun, and fast-paced, with lots of hands-on practice. Typically, you’ll spend the mornings in lecture and labs, and in the afternoons you'll work on skills training and simulations; occasionally there are scheduled evening sessions. We cultivate an atmosphere that is intense, supportive, and challenging.

Our classes are designed to maximize your real-world learning. Lectures teach how the body works, so you will understand why it doesn’t. Homework and quizzes are based on realistic case studies in order to challenge and solidify your learning, and prepare you for increasingly difficult simulations.

Hands-on labs teach you the treatment skills required to perform under challenging field situations. Starting on the first day of the course, you’ll face realistic simulations designed to build your field experience and judgment. Each simulation is carefully constructed to develop and challenge your skills. Your instructors use the inevitable mistakes as a source of constructive feedback that helps you and your classmates learn from what went wrong, as well as what went right. On longer courses, simulations are videotaped so you can see what happened and talk about it in the present tense.

Details on the Course Syllabus

• Patient Assessment and Treatment: Anatomy and physiology, shock, medical emergencies, cold weather injuries, dehydration and hypothermia, problems of high altitude, injuries of over-use, and patient care.
• Evacuation Equipment and Techniques: Improvised equipment, methods of evacuation, extricating, securing, transferring the victim, and principles and practice of litter carries.
• Workshops: Patient assessment, airway management and rescue breathing, cardio-pulmonary resuscitation, C-spine stabilization, techniques for improvised bandaging and splinting, traction splinting, wrapping and taping, and reducing dislocations while in the backcountry.

Participants use a "litter" to transport a patient in the backcountry .

Upon successful completion of the Wilderness First Responder course, each participant will receive a three-year certification from the Wilderness Medicine Training Center (WMTC), as well as WMTC certification in adult CPR. AAI also offers a three-day WFR Recertification course.

WMTC teaches according to the practice guidelines established by the Wilderness Medical Society and the National Association of EMS Physicians. You will also learn more stringent spine management guidelines established by Peter Goth, M.D., and adopted by the state of Maine. WMTC certifications are accepted by Outward Bound, the National Outdoor Leadership School, the American Camping Association, and all state and federal guide licensing agencies.

The WMTC now has direct reciprocity with SOLO Wilderness Medicine, AIRE Wilderness Medicine, and Desert Mountain Medicine. This means that the WFR certification received through the WMTC program is recognized and can be renewed through any of these organizations.

Although we encourage WMTC graduates to recertify with us, we do not require it. We understand that some of our students may occasionally wish to recertify with another company. To facilitate this process we have direct reciprocity with Wilderness Professional Training (WPT), Wilderness Medicine Outfitters (WMO), and First Lead. WMTC graduates may also attend a Wilderness Medical Associates "Challenge Course". All these organizations will permit a WMTC graduate to recertify directly with them and will issue a new certification upon successful completion of one of their recertification courses. WMTC graduates should be aware that there are minor differences between each wilderness medicine provider and are encouraged to purchase and read the text appropriate to the recertification course they plan to attend prior to the course.

Learn more about our WFR Recertification program

The Wilderness Medical Training Center is lcoated near Mazama, WA on the east side of the Cascade Range of Washington State.

• Download WMTC's Registration Form
• Download driving directions to WMTC's classroom.
• Download WMTC's WFR Equipment List
• View additional WMTC course dates and locations.

Course fee includes textbooks, instruction, extensive practice sessions, scenarios, and testing.

WMTC provides training for serious students of pre-hospital wilderness care and risk management. The courses, curriculum, and instructors are some of the finest in the world. WMTC courses give graduates the tools they need to prevent and handle the emergencies, accidents and illnesses they will experience in the real world. WMTC courses are hands-on, intense, practical and fun. They are also small enough to guarantee ample personal attention.