Wilderness Medical Society teaches swiftwater rescue in Spokane conference

Out in the wilderness, medical professionals won’t have the same equipment and resources as a hospital or clinic. But the goal is the same: save their patients.

Celebrating its 40th anniversary conference in Spokane this week, the Wilderness Medical Society is trying to give health care workers the skills to navigate their work in the outdoors .

WMS co-founder Kenneth Kizer realized in the 1980s that many of his fellows in the health care industry did not have adequate training to treat patients when accidents or medical emergencies occurred in mountains, jungles, deserts, caves, rivers or other environments outside of a medical setting.

“We did not see a general level of knowledge among physicians about how to treat snake bites, for example, and a whole list of things,” he said. “Even common problems in austere environments can prove challenging. That knowledge previously was generally pretty poor, and we thought we wanted to do something about that and we hope we have.”

The organization has more than 4,000 members, publishes a medical journal and holds a biannual conference. According to organization spokesperson Kelly George, many of their members are medical professionals who engage in search and rescue operations and need to be prepared to work in any environment.

“We’ve got about 300 people in person in Spokane from around the world, – nurses, nurse practitioners, paramedics, physicians,” George said. “Basically, we have anyone who’s in the health care field and wants to be prepared to treat medical emergencies in the wilderness. And a lot of them are the people who get called when people are missing or injured.”

The Society’s conferences are typically held in mountain resort locations, but the Spokane river winding its way through downtown gave conference-goers the opportunity to receive swiftwater rescue training that has not typically been available at previous events.

“Having a clean river that has great moving water currents and is a walking distance from the convention is amazing. This is really unusual and we’ve never had our conference anywhere where we could possibly do this before,” said Chris Davis, a North Carolina doctor and course instructor.

About two dozen doctors, nurses, and medical students wearing wetsuits and lifejackets waded into the flowing Spokane River Tuesday afternoon to learn what it takes to save someone from drowning while in fast-moving water. For some, they did not expect to save someone from a swiftwater rafting accident but felt the responsibility as a doctor to be prepared to save someone’s life while in their personal lives.

“As medical providers, we feel sort of a impetus to help others that are in trouble,” said WMS Board Secretary Stephanie Lareau. “And we can be concerned when we don’t know how to save someone. So hopefully we can give them some skills to help do that in a safe way and not put themselves in danger when trying to help somebody else.”

Conference-goer and University of Colorado medical student Luke Sloan said he anticipates being an anesthesiologist who is unlikely to rescue someone from a rafting accident throughout his career. But he is going to be in that environment in his personal life and feels pulled to know how to protect on the waterways.

“I plan to be in the wilderness for a lot of my life,” Sloan said. “And so just having this knowledge and skill base is really helpful and might put me in a good position to go on different trips or expeditions that, if I didn’t have this experience, I might not be prepared to go on.”

Taking place over the course of an afternoon, the training serves as an introduction to swiftwater rescue and did not provide certification to its participants, which is conducted by the American Canoe Association. The course’s primary purpose is to promote further education, Davis said.

“Our goals here are to introduce some medical professionals to the to the environment, the whitewater environment, and show them some of the hazards and some of the techniques that we may use to rescue people to give them some context, for the for the whole discipline and also to hopefully encourage people to get more training in the future,” Davis said.

Before getting in the water, Davis told the medical professionals to forget rescue training in other disciplines because they are often very different. In rock climbing individuals are instructed to wait and stay still after something has gone wrong. That type of patience is impossible in the water because it is always moving.

“The seconds you spend thinking about how to save someone, the further away from you that person is,” he said.

Meanwhile, the amount of risk a rescuer is willing to take should “exponentially decrease” the longer they have been in the water because “self-rescue should always be the priority.”

Asked what recreational watergoers should do to stay safe, Davis had three points of advice – wear a safety vest and helmet, don’t drink alcohol and don’t be out in the water alone.

“You may think that you’re a great swimmer or be okay on lakes or rivers but people underestimate how powerful moving water can be. And how exhausting being in very cold water can be,” Davis said.

Lareau said individuals need basic knowledge of wilderness first aid but so do primary care doctors. If a medical professional knows their patient will be in the wilderness, they should have the knowledge to advise how to remain safe.

“It’s really important to think about the effects of people’s chronic medical conditions on their ability to recreate in different environments. For example, patients with hypertension or heart disease often take medications which can make them become more easily dehydrated, or there’s some psychiatric medications that make people more susceptible to heat,” she said.

“So if you had a patient that was going to be planning on doing, you know, a long backpacking trip or recreating outside, it may be important to think about those medications and risk factors that the patient may not be aware of.”