Wilderness and Rescue Medicine

by Jeffrey Isaac

A Guide to Practicing Medicine in Challenging Environments

Wilderness and Rescue Medicine: A Practical Guide for the Basic and Advanced Practitioner provides the critical insight and tools required to practice medicine in remote or challenging environments.

There is no place in field medicine for unreasonable restrictions on the practical application of medical judgment—that is the guiding philosophy of this user-friendly guide. Wilderness and Rescue Medicine: A Practical Guide for the Basic and Advanced Practitioner teaches readers how to improvise, adapt and exercise reasonable judgment at any level of medical training and in any difficult environment, from the desert to the oceans, from the backwoods to cities stricken by disaster.

Grounded in the collective wisdom of hundreds of instructors, rescue personnel and medical practitioners, this text explores medical problems in a broad wilderness context—including cold injuries, altitude illness, diving and lightening injuries and toxins, among others—and pairs that exploration with the realities of solving such problems in the field, well outside the confines and comforts of mainstream medicine.

Wilderness and Rescue Medicine: A Practical Guide for the Basic and Advanced Practitioner provides:

• The most up-to-date guidance on practicing medicine in a wilderness context
• An introduction to critical body systems and the general principals of trauma
• Specific information on environmental and backcountry medicine
• An examination of the medical role in search and rescue missions

Genres: Nonfiction

269 pages, Paperback

First published March 16, 2012

Reviews

[Peyton Whirley · Rating 3 out of 5]

yayyy wfr

[Kim Clune · Rating 3 out of 5]

This textbook was required to prepare for Wilderness First Responder training, so I read it carefully. The information is excellent and useful, but I found it’s presentation tedious. Making a detailed outline of each chapter to craft a handy guide, I often found information in highlight boxes and chapter review questions that would include details not necessarily outlined in the prose. And the study guide also required by the same company asked questions that weren’t always easily found. I don’t mind doing the legwork of traditional study, but I would rather have focused on committing content to memory by way of flowchart type organization rather than hunting and pecking through multiple presentations of the same topic while in search of specific answers.

[Porter Sprigg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Taught me what I needed to know

[Julia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this for my WFR class. Lots of good information to prepare for the in-person training, but this book won't be able to replace the practical stuff!

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this for a class. It has interesting scenarios and good information to help me prepare for potential emergencies in the wilderness. I already have medical knowledge; as I read this I wondered about how difficult it may be to understand for someone who doesn't have medical knowledge. It may be a challenge to follow, but I think it would still be useful.