Wilderness Medicine
Wilderness Medicine Program
No matter your experience or background, our Wilderness Medicine Program prepares you to confidently care for the sick and injured in the outdoors until first responders arrive.
Our instructors have extensive training and real-world experience in emergency services, providing life-saving care in demanding environments. They work routinely with clients across all skill levels and backgrounds, from novices to seasoned professional providers.
Our training prepares you to calmly and confidently manage illness and injury under stress in the outdoors, where first responders may be delayed—teaching not just the how, but the why. We are a Pennsylvania Department of Health–accredited provider and also offer nationally recognized American Heart Association and Stop the Bleed programs.
- Training designed to build confidence through practical, hands-on instruction.
- Small class sizes that prioritize training quality and client outcomes—not volume.
- Private training available to meet your group's goals and schedule needs.
We’re often asked these questions about this course...
We will personally follow up with you with three quick and easy forms for you to complete and return. We will send you a detailed course information sheet which will contain all of the applicable details that you’ll need to prepare and arrive for your training.
For all of our Wilderness Medicine Training Courses, True North will provide all of the needed training supplies. However, if you would like a better sense of what additional gear that you will need to bring on the course, or optional gear to consider, then check out the equipment list that will be included with the course information sheet when you register. When you register, we will send you the information for the required texts that you will need to prepare for the program and use during the course.
Yes! While we offer open registration courses, most of our Wilderness Medicine Training Courses are set up and run for private groups, like camp staff, colleges, and park rangers. The benefits include personalized training, tailored for specific needs, and which can be run at your location or ours.
In some ways, you will find the training and issues very similar to what you see in a front-country setting, but in most other respects, you will find it to be very different. First, you will be learning to deal with issues that you rarely find in an urban environment, like venomous bites, acute hypothermia, and lightning strikes. Also, wilderness medical care requires a greater emphasis on improvisation as you won’t have access to the equipment in your ambulance or office. In turn, the standard of care in wilderness environments may differ substantially from your state protocols. Lastly, most front-country medical providers only deal with patients for brief periods (maybe just the ambulance ride to the hospital) and in teams, but, as a WFA provider, you may need to care for your patient for hours or longer - all by yourself.
Ready for an Adventure
Sometimes just dialing 911 isn't enough. Learn to be the first responder until first responders arrive.
