By Susan Elise Campbell
A person never knows when first aid training may be needed, but Clark Hayward, founder of Adirondack Wilderness Medicine, believes if they are an hour or more away from a hospital, his wilderness first aid course may not only come in handy, but save a life.
“It’s amazing that new students taking the course are surprised how much can go wrong out on a hike or ski trip,” said Hayward. “We are here locally to train anyone who does things outdoors, either sports or hunting or in their line of work.”
The basic two-day, 16-hour training encompasses everything a standard first-aid course includes along with the practical skills to prevent such conditions as hypothermia or heat stroke, he said.
“The difference between wilderness first aid and standard first aid is the latter assumes an ambulance will arrive in about 15 minutes,” said Hayward.
With wilderness first aid, that help “may not arrive for hours or even days,” during which time someone has to manage the situation medically as well as provide food and water, he said.
The course curriculum Hayward follows is designed by SOLO, the international leader in wilderness education founded in 1976 and the originator of wilderness medicine in the U.S. Hayward is a licensee of the SOLO program, he said.
While wilderness first aid may be the course choice of scout leaders, camp counsellors and avid sportspeople, Adk Wild Med offers higher level training and certification as well.
SOLO’s Wilderness First Responders course is the challenging and comprehensive training for those who work in the backcountry as trip leaders, mountain guides, river guides, and ski patrollers. This is a 72-hour course over 8 or 9 days.
First responders can be recertified after completing SOLO’s 2-day course that updates their practical skills. This course is the most popular for employment purposes, Hayward said.
Finally, Adk Wild Med offers SOLO’s WEMT Module, a 5-day program that upgrades street First Responders to the Wilderness First Responders level, and current emergency medical technicians and paramedics to the Wilderness EMT level.
Hayward’s clients can be weekend hikers and paddlers, mountain guides in the Himalayas, search and rescue teams, or any type of outdoorsman in between. He said clients are equally split between men and women and that sometimes couples take his courses.
All are thankful to have completed their training when they can apply it.
One client who returned this summer to refresh his wilderness first aid skills was traveling in South America when someone in their group passed out at lunch.
“My client recognized the person had gotten a piece of food stuck in his airway and dislodged it,” said Hayward. “He was pleased with himself because had he not taken the course, he probably would have been running around like the rest of the group not knowing what to do.”
In another part of the world, a client who is a rock and ice climber used Hayward’s training in Wilderness First Response to attend to a severely injured woman on a nearby rock face who had been hit in the head by a falling rock. “He could hear someone was in distress,” Hayward said. “It took about 12 hours by the time the woman was lowered down, someone found a cell signal and EMTs arrived.”
“The victim was unconscious throughout the entire incident but survived, and survived neurologically intact,” said Hayward.
Hayward has himself been a paramedic for 30 years and was an EMT prior. He is a long-time white water rafter, an active ski patroller at Willard Mountain, and a Fellow of the Academy of Wilderness Medicine. He is also chief operating officer of E5 Support Services, an Emergency Medical Services employment agency with nearly 100 employees that staff ambulances services and fire departments throughout eastern New York.
Adirondack Wilderness Medicine was formed by Hayward in 2004. He teaches out of the Ndakinna Education Center at 23 Middlegrove Road in Greenfield Center and also travels internationally giving courses for various organizations in anything from first aid to cardiac and pediatric life support.
“The hardest challenge getting the business going was simply getting word out,” Hayward said. “Wilderness first aid is not something you typically see or hear advertised.”
But his name is well recognized today, and people come from around the world to be trained or recertified right here in the Adirondacks.
Visit www.adkwildmed.com as well as Facebook for more information and course schedules.