Day 5: Wilderness First Aid Course

For the past couple days our group has been in training for Wilderness First Aid, and we have officially completed it today. This was definitely one of the best classes I have ever taken, because I now feel ultimately prepared for almost any situation if I need to help save someone while out in the wild. The biggest takeaway I gained from the course was that there are so many resources around us that we don't even know in the woods, and even in urban areas. On top of that, there's also different assessment and positioning techniques that I learned to do when using Wilderness First Aid that will help me a lot when taking care of different patients back home. For example, when you need to quickly assess a patient's circulation and there's a reason you don't want to turn them on their back, you can quickly move your hands behind the patient's back and legs, then look on your gloves for any blood. Another example is that if you want to keep a patient's spine straight but need to turn them on their side, you can position their arm and hand in a certain way so that the spine does stay completely straight. These are just a few of the several tips and tricks that I learned in the past few days that I can use while taking care of patients in the urban area I live in.

One other thing I learned in the past few days is what the lack of access to healthcare does to a community. With the lack of access to healthcare that these patients have, it unfortunately tends to decrease the patient's want to improve and look out for their health. This is also because of the lack of knowledge they have toward health and also without the access to healthcare, they're also unable to treat the acute issues they have.