What it’s all about.
The Recreational Outdoor Enthusiast + The Professional Outdoor Guide
This medical reference app is designed mostly for those with a WFA up to WEMT training, but even those with higher level training who do not routinely practice medicine outside will find information of merit inside this app. And, while at first glance the content may appear intimidating to those with no wilderness medical training, even the novice can consult the “Patient Assessment Quick Reference” and gain some direction and traction with where to go next to diagnose and treat a patient.
Recreational Outdoor Enthusiast
While at first glance the content may appear intimidating to those with no wilderness medical training, even the novice can consult the “Patient Assessment Quick Reference” and gain some direction and traction with where to go next to diagnose and treat a patient. The “environmental illness” section is invaluable to the newer backcountry user especially in terms of education about prevention of things like heatstroke, hypothermia, dehydration and exercise associated hyponatremia, and high- altitude illness.
Perhaps most importantly, the information about the common decision-making errors that contribute to almost all backcountry accidents are made readily available in the “checklists explained” and “subjective decision-making errors” sections. The “checklists” are designed around this content in an attempt to help ritualize and structure the safety conversations we should be having prior to any outdoor excursion. This content is not readily available anywhere else except as content in extensive high level outdoor professional trainings.
Recreational Outdoor Guide
This medical reference is designed mostly for those with a WFA up to WEMT training, but even those with higher level training who do not routinely practice medicine outside will find information of merit inside this app. Topics not routinely covered in wilderness medicine training that are especially relevant are:
1. Hypothermia in the trauma patient.
2. First responder Stress Injury and Stress Continuum Scale for personal evaluation.
3. Mental illness conditions, especially the problems some psychotropic medications can present in the context of heat, dehydration, prolonged exertion, and hyponatremia.
4. Exercise associated hyponatremia.
5. Avalanche Resuscitation protocols.
6. Patient Assessment Quick Reference allows you to not miss a step without having to thumb through 10 pages of a book.
7. Subjective decision-making errors.
8. Critical checklists that attempt to ritualize and structure decision-making around these subjective errors, with both a “professional” tract, and “recreational” tract. These checklists can be used with clients and students to reinforce the discussions you may have had around these issues in the moment in the field.
Who we are.
WildMed Etrier is a company that develops medical reference applications. These apps are focused specifically on the outdoor recreationalist or outdoor professional user, with current apps in use developed for wilderness medicine and ski patrol reference. The existing template may be adapted to an organization’s own specific medical protocols upon consultation.
This app was created by Kaen (kl) Lapides. She is a paramedic and educator living and working in Breckenridge, CO. Passionate about education, the science of learning, and how to expedite institutional knowledge acquisition in new outdoor and medical practitioners, kl has taught and guided throughout the west as well as volunteered medical service in Nepal. She has had a lifelong professional interest and inquiry into the subjective factors that play into most recreational accidents.
Her professional experience consists of over 15 years instructing and course directing mountaineering, backcountry skiing, rock climbing, canyoneering, and staff training for the Colorado Outward Bound School. She has taught all levels of wilderness medicine as well as EMT and paramedic classes for the Colorado Mountain College System and Desert Mountain Medicine, and several different military and medical school resident wilderness elective special contracts for over 15 years. Emergency Medical Services work entails 15 years as a paramedic and medical trainer for the Breckenridge, CO ski patrol, and paramedic for the Breckenridge Medical Center Level 5 trauma center. Most recently working for Eagle County Paramedic Services as a Community Paramedic as well as the Snowmass Ski Patrol in Aspen, CO.
