December 9th: 1st Meeting!

2012 SWM students, don't forget that Friday, December 9th is our first get-together.  We will meet at the Aerie office, 315 South 4th Street East, Conference Room (second floor), Missoula at 4 PM MST.  Anyone needing to Skype in should contact us if you haven't already done-so.  Parents and other relatives with questions are encouraged to be there as well.

In addition to being attended, in person or electronically, but all new students, the majority of the Semester instructors will be there, as will a number 2011 Semester graduates.

In the meeting, we will ask:

Do you have your passports, plane tickets, and immunizations taken care of? 

What questions do you still have about this?

    Have you completed your online background check yet? Don't forget it needs to be notarized.

    PLEASE turn in your Univ. of Montana registration paperwork

    Do you have any questions about the gear list?

    What address should we send your EMT textbook to?  

    Remember that your first reading assignments and online quizzes from the textbook will begin the second week of January.

    What is your plan for paying your final tuition balance?

    If you arrive early in Costa Rica, here are a few suggestions for places to stay...

Please think about these items beforehand and come to the meeting ready to ask questions and get answers.  The importance of pre-planning cannot be overstated.

We look forward to meeting all of you!

Preparations for 2012 Semester

We are gearing up for the 2012 Semester, interviewing applicants and finalizing schedules.  Our hosts at Rancho Mastatal in Costa Rica, where we will spend the first three weeks of February, are ready.  New to this year's program, we will be traveling to the amazing Rafiki Lodge, on the Savegre River, for swiftwater rescue training during the last week of the month.  These two incredible tropical locations will be hard to leave; however the transition will be made easier by our return to the beautiful and, by that time, snowy Rich Ranch in Montana on the Southern end of the Bob Marshall Wilderness.

Take a look at posts from last year's program to get a sense of day-to-day life during the Semester.  Call our office to get in touch with any of our Semester graduates.  The program requires a tremendous amount of hard work.  Its academic rigor is balanced by endless outdoor scenarios, practical exercises and training.   The Semester offers:

• 15 University credits
• Wilderness EMT certification
• National Registry EMT certification
• State of Montana EMT certification
• Swiftwater Rescue Technician certification
• Level 1 Avalanche certification
• Wilderness survival training
• Wilderness navigation training
• Search and Rescue training
• Clinical experiences on an ambulance and in an emergency room
• Experience offering a free health clinic in Costa Rica

While it takes place in two of the most beautiful places anywhere, it is not a vacation.  If this sounds like fun, we would like to hear from you!

End of Program

We met one last time as a group on Sunday.  Students are now registering for their computerized national EMT exams; Tressa, Emile and Lauren will test here in Missoula tomorrow.

We have said this before:  this is an amazing group.  In addition to their intelligence and motivation, they were phenomenally supportive of each other during two and half challenging and intense months.  We feel very privileged to have had them as students and look forward to hearing great things about each of them in the future.  Jenna, Emile, Emilie, Sam D, Sam V, Tressa, Savannah, Lauren, Liam, Taylor, Miranda and Dylan:  Thank you!  Thank you also to our instructors:  Darcy, Trenton, Andrea, Fernando, Drs. Moore and Johnson, our swifwater instructor Mike Johnston, avalanche instructors Dudley Improta and Tim Laroche, HazMat instructor Dan Corti, cadaver lab instructor Miranda Lewis, the Missoula City Fire Department, Melissa Diebert and the ambulance staff at Missoula Emergency Services, the staff of St. Patrick Hospital Emergency Department, staff at Rancho Mastatal in Costa Rica and the Rich Ranch in Seeley Lake and numerous others who donned fake wounds, jumped into icy rivers, buried themselves in snow and otherwise acted hurt or contributed their expertise.

Swiftwater Rescue Technician Training on the Clark Fork and Blackfoot Rivers

It's a theme of the program:  there is no substitute for experience.  This past week, students were wading off of snow-covered river banks into ice-cold water to learn how to be an effective rescuer (and not a patient!) in a fast-moving river.  During this time, they earned their Swiftwater Rescue Technician (SRT) certifications, which are the industry standard for the river-guiding and rescue industry.   Skills acquired included assessment of river hazards, establishing safety during river rescues, swimming in cold, fast-moving water, acting as live-bait (swimming out to rescue an unresponsive or otherwise incapacitated person), setting up and using pulleys and ropes (Z-drag systems) to pull objects like rafts and kayaks out of jams, and using throw-bags to get a safety rope to a conscious swimmer.  This is now our last weekend, with students completing their emergency room observations and ambulance ride-alongs.  The program ends on Saturday, with National and State testing on Sunday.  This is an amazingly skilled and motivated group that we expect will do exceptionally well.

Missoula Day Photos and a Mass Casualty Event in Seeley

We'll start by saying the finger in the top photo is moulaged. This was one of the many (and less serious) injuries that students had to manage during an overnight mass casualty exercise this past weekend. Instructors woke students up at midnight. Students had to find their patients, (who were buried in an avalanche) and care for them throughout the night, while also coordinating with local Search and Rescue (SAR) teams (thanks to SAR members from Seeley Lake and Condon for their help). It was an educational and exhausting event for all. Other pictures include vehicle extrication practice with Missoula City Fire Department, low-angle rescue practice with SAR, and a picture from the top of St. Patrick Hospital here in Missoula, as students discussed backcountry helicopter rescue with Life Flight's RN/ paramedic flight team. This coming week includes jumping in to the river for three days of Swiftwater Rescue Technician (SRT) training with the Whitewater Rescue Institute.

Missoula Day

Yesterday was an incredible day. Students started at Missoula Emergency Services, Missoula's ambulance service, for a review of ambulance operations. Following that, we were very fortunate to have Dan Corti, Executive Director of the University of Montana's Environmental Health and Risk Management Department, teach students about hazardous materials and EMS responses to HazMat scenes. We then went to Missoula City Fire Department for vehicle extrication, with students putting on turn-outs, learning from professional firefighters and practicing with extrication equipment. Following that, students had an update on recent developments in trauma care from John Bleicher, head of St. Patrick Hospital's Trauma Services. After that, they visited the LifeFlight helicopter at the hospital for a review of helicopter rescue. To end the day, they met at the University of Montana's cadaver lab to review human anatomy and physiology. We have some pictures (minus the cadaver lab) that we will upload over the next few days. Currently, everyone is healthy, back up in Seeley Lake and the snow.

Avalanche, Winter Survival and Navigation Training

Students returned last night from 5 days of winter survival, route finding and avalanche training. They snowshoed in 11 miles to a backcountry yurt, meeting up with instructors Dudley Improta and Tim Laroche from the West Central Montana Avalanche Center. The focus of this outstanding avalanche training, like that of the Semester, is prevention of injury through assessment and recognition of hazards. They learned to locate, access and treat avalanche victims. Students also learned to make snow-caves/ quinzees, continued honing their route-finding skills, and added more winter survival techniques to their repertoire. Now they are back to their heated cabins. For the next two days, many of them will complete their emergency room observations and ambulance ride-alongs.

More in the Snow

It is hard to imagine that a little over a week ago we were in 90 degree weather with 90 percent humidity. In Montana, students are honing medical skills in a cold environment, learning about hypothermia and frostbite, and navigating through the snowy mountains. From top to bottom, photos are of: looking East from the Ranch; learning the local topography with Andrea; mountain lion tracks found during the first day of exploration North of the Ranch; what it looks like when you try to run a race through five feet of snow; two groups of two meeting up in the hills overlooking the Blackfoot valley, just above the Ranch. For the next two days, many students are seeing patients in Missoula while riding on the ambulance and observing in the emergency departments.

In the Montana Snow!

Everyone is here in Montana, healthy, and getting adjusted to an entirely new climate. We are waiting for some good pictures from the first day in the mountains. For now, you can follow this SPOT link to our location near Seeley Lake. The satellite photo was taken in the fall, so you have to imagine the snow (which this year is significant).

Yesterday, we had a great introduction to the facility and the region by Jack that included some poetry and cowboy insight into living and managing risk in the Bob Marshall/Northern Rockies. Students

tried on snowshoes and trucked around, discussing mountain lions and the beginnings of bear awareness and encounters. We worked on North American map skills, UTM, township/range, and orienting to the particulars around the ranch. We talked about the shift in awareness from "look down while walking, stop, look up and around" to "look up while walking, stop, look down and around" snake awareness vs. lion/bear awareness.

YouTube Video Update

We edited the video a bit, adding some more photographs. View the new version here. Please share this link with anybody that might be interested.

Off Safely

The last day of the Costa Rica program ended safely with all students heading off on the airport shuttle or for a day at the beach. In a week we will meet in frigid Montana, expecting at least an 80 degree F change in temperature. Other pictures include work on the cobb stove, with particular attention given to Emilie for working so hard on her birthday (!), and the completed stove in front of the local Soda. During the community service project, students constructed and installed two of these simple, efficient and inexpensive devices. These stoves will significantly decrease carbon monoxide and airborne particulate wastes that contribute to so many of the respiratory diseases that we saw during the health clinic.

This morning we had a mass casualty incident at the local elementary school. During a two-hour scenario, Aerie students triaged, moved and cared for 14 elementary school students (most of whom spoke no English) with carbon monoxide poisoning. The past few days we have been down to the local rivers quite often, caring for patients, building shelters to stay the night, and navigating our way to and from the scenes. We also completed our splinting section, with groups of students making improvised femur traction devises and having them evaluated.

February 20

This is our first full weekend of the month, with both Saturday and Sunday off. No interesting pictures to upload, as they would only consist of everyone sitting in hammocks reading. Tomorrow is the beginning of our last week in Costa Rica, and it will be the most rigorous yet. We have a number of extended scenarios to complete, most of which will require the coordination of all of the skills learned thus far. In addition, we will spend two days back in Zapaton, where we held the medical clinic, building rocket stoves for families identified as having a particular need for reducing cooking smoke in their homes.

February 18, post 2

After days of no posts, we're now putting up two in one day! Of the hundreds of images gathered over the past week, here are some highlights of our experiences with actual and simulated patient care. In the top three photos, our intrepid students practice improvising litters and caring for a head injury (simulated blood only!)

The next photograph shows our end-of-clinic table top debrief. For the table top, students present the details of patients they saw during the clinic to staff, including our visiting physician, Dr. Greg Moore. Students were evaluated on their presentations and asked follow up questions by staff and their colleagues. Finally, Dr. Moore elaborated on the patients' histories and gave reasons for his diagnoses. In the final photos, students, instructors, translators, and Dr. Moore all take patient histories, vital signs, and record their findings while visiting patients in their own homes. A good week!

February 18

Yesterday ended with practical examinations covering map and compass, emergency shelter construction (second photo, with Savannah and Jenna at their station), and a "splint-off", with students competing for the best splints, based on criteria like functionality, durability, simplicity, versatility and aesthetics. In the bottom photo, Liam is using a scripted description of his tib/ fib splint to add impact. It helped, and his splint was excellent, but as of this morning his group remained tied for second. At this moment, Andrea and Fernando are teaching UTM (Universal Transverse Mercator) grids and improvised femur traction splint construction. Those pictures are the two at the top of this post. The photo of the trees is this morning's sunrise.