On September 17th and 18th, 2022, faculty and graduate students from the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences participated in the National Outdoor Leadership School’s (NOLS) Wilderness First Aid course held at the Organic Climbing LLC/Nittany Mountain Works building in Phillipsburg, PA. In the geosciences, it’s fairly common to do field work in some remote places. I have to admit that I was probably not well prepared to handle the slew of emergency situations that could arise while in the field with students and colleagues! This gap in my own knowledge was a big motivating factor in signing up for this course. The department recognized the importance of faculty and graduate students having this experience as well, and covered the expense of the course for many participants. Overall, thirty of us joined host Brett Simpson for a very hands-on crash course in how to handle medical emergencies out in the field where a call to 911 may not bring immediate help.
Hands-on training
Day one established the technique at the foundation of everything else we would learn over the weekend – the Patient Assessment System (PAS). The PAS provides a strategy for quickly discerning their own safety and the state of the patient when coming upon the scene of an accident. What caused the accident? Is it safe to approach the patient? Is there an immediate threat to the patient’s life? Can the group manage the patient’s evacuation from the field site, or does help need to be called in? We learned how to answer these questions in a systematic way that could be followed even when the pressure might be high. The remainder of day one and day two focused on putting this system to practice in a number of exercises.
The hands-on exercises running through the PAS with mock patients were definitely the highlight of the weekend, and were very effective at ingraining what we had learned. Everyone had the opportunity to both assess a patient’s condition and to put their acting chops to the test with their best renditions of “head injury” or “dehydrated field-camp student”. Personal highlights included wrapping Professor Mark Patzkowsky’s broken arm in a rain jacket with a makeshift splint made from items in our backpacks, watching a graduate student get wrapped up in a sleeping-bag-tarp burrito to fight their hypothermia, and a few of us really selling our injuries with gobs of fake blood. We put on a good show at the department picnic afterwards! Beyond the training, this was a great chance to meet and spend some away-from-work time with some of my new colleagues – I had just started at Penn State two months before.
Worth the weekend
After the class, everyone received their official certificates of completion. I am confident we are all better prepared to face any emergencies that may arise in the field, and I would highly recommend that any future faculty or students who expect to spend time in the field attend this course. NOLS has been around for decades, and they have clearly honed their courses into some very effective and educational experiences. Upcoming training sessions in Pennsylvania and across the United States can be found at the NOLS website. Penn State faculty have access to Guiding Principles and Safety-Plan-Development Checklist for PIs, Instructors, and Trip Leaders in the Department of Geosciences, which incorporates many of the lessons learned from the NOLS training.
Faculty writing research proposals involving fieldwork can contact their program directors to determine whether the costs of WFA training (~$400/person) can be included in proposal budgets.
Additional first aid training can be done locally via the Red Cross.