WALS™ or Wilderness Advanced Life Support is the premiere medical training for advanced practitioners whose professional responsibilities may require the use or supervision of advanced techniques in remote, rural, and back country settings. WALS focuses on the procedures and technologies that are the most appropriate for extreme environments and the extended-care context. For the experienced practitioner, WALS™ provides a well-rounded exposure to the challenge of providing advanced medical care in a difficult environment. Time is also devoted to hands-on training and the general principles of wilderness and rescue medicine.
According to course instructor and WMA president, Dr. David Johnson, “the WALS™ course attracts doctors from a wide variety of specialties, military medical personnel, and medical personnel from search teams, expeditions, and remote clinics.” Dr. Johnson has more than 20 years of experience as an emergency room physician, wilderness medicine instructor, and expedition physician. Dr. Johnson is internationally recognized as a wilderness medicine expert, speaker, and author.
WALS™ – August 8-12, 2007 – is open to physicians, physician assistants, nurses, residents, and EMT-paramedics. A special discount will be offered to licensed Wisconsin EMT paramedics or groups of three or more. Thirty-six hours of AMA Category I CME credit is included for physicians and physician assistants. This activity has been reviewed as eligible for 28.5 credits towards the Fellow of the Academy of Wilderness Medicine registry, a program of the Wilderness Medical Society. For paramedics WALS™ is approved for 36 CECBEMS continuing education hours. Nurses receive 41 contact hours through the Wisconsin Nurse’s Association, a provider accredited by the American Nurses Credentialing Center’s Commission on Accreditation.
The WALS™ program, like all emergency medicine is dynamic and constantly evolving. Instructors and students are encouraged to discuss new and controversial material, perspectives, and techniques. As a result, WALS™ has more of the idea-sharing flavor of a graduate seminar than a packaged program. Topics include patient assessment, body systems, environmental medicine, toxins, backcountry medicine (all with an ALS treatment and transport component) and equipment improvisation. The emphasis in the WALS™ course that differs from our basic WMA curriculum is the idea of “what ALS interventions and/or equipment is reasonable and helpful to include in specific remote medical scenarios.”
Approximately half of the course, held at Northeast Wisconsin Technical College, is outdoors. The practical sessions will not be dangerous or overly strenuous, but participants should be prepared to deal with uneven terrain. Technical rock and rescue skills are not required.