Mountain First Aid or remote/wilderness first aid.


Mountain first aid, first aid in the remote areas and wilderness places of the world present us with an interesting and demanding challenge. Help is often a long way away and the reason we are in the wilderness is do interesting and challenging activities. We like rock climbing, caving, kayaking, mountain walking and the like. I have enjoyed these activities since I was 9 years old

On Tryfan looking down towards Llyn Ogwen

The mountain first aid course must meet all of these challenges. If one is a member of a mountain rescue team, you will spend half your waking life learning about first aid for the wilderness. That, afterall, will be your area of operation. I found very early on in my career, that the people involved in mountain rescue had hearts of gold and legs of steel, but were often misled by out of date ideas and dogma when it came to patient care. Interestingly this was easy to change, because of the nature of the people themselves, open to new ideas and quality training.
It is a different matter in the wide world of wilderness and remote first aid training. Some of the very old ideas are very firmly embedded. The idea of not removing the boot, I do not know where it came from, but its a problem

This is actually a RTC victim, note that he has trench foot as well:-

Can you imagine trying to treat this, or even work out what is wrong without removing the boot. The risk of the patient loosing their foot would be enormous!

I believe that a good quality patient head to toe and a structured history will elicit most of what is wrong, with your patient. This must be done, as the injury above would be terribly painful and give significant masking pain.

If you don't look, you wont find!

There is an almost an infinite amount to write about this subject, more to follow

By Martin Bennett
Director Axiom Training Ltd