Massgrunt
4 August 2006, 02:20
At IMUA's request.
This course is NOT to be confused with any kind of tactical care course. It is civilian EMT-B with a "wilderness" angle.
SOLO Schools, New Hampshire Wilderness EMT-B
After coming back from Iraq, I wanted to get some additional medical training before I deployed again. I was pretty happy with the basic stuff I was taught in the Marines and on the job training with some 18Ds, but I wanted to learn as much as possible. Fortunately, I never had to treat anything beyond my limited skills, but I never want to look at a wounded buddy and wonder "What do I do?" So I started looking for courses.
SOLO seemed like the best option, since the course was only a month long and accepted the GI Bill (through a local college). There were a few other similar courses, one at NOLS, but I went with this one. The course tuition was $2495 for a month long course, room and board included.
The campus is in Conway, New Hampshire. It's small and a pretty cool location, the residence hall is right across the road from the classroom building. Before I go any further, I have to mention the food. It's outstanding and included in the tuition. They have a full time chef at the school and he doesn't fuck around.
In my class, all the students were male, mostly outdoors industry types, one a full time NOLS instructor, another a volunteer SAR guy, a couple that worked with at-risk kids, etc.
The focus of this course is on emergency care in the wilderness, defined as being more than an hour from help and with limited resources. I thought that might have some application to the high risk environment. The classes were taught by the lecture method, usually followed by scenarios outside. The instructors were good and clearly knew their stuff. The material was straight out of the Brady EMT textbook, along with the "wilderness" angle from the institutional knowledge of the school and it's instructors. There were two practical application sessions, one at the local EMS service and the other at the local hospital. The hospital was interesting, the staff was great and you got plenty of chances to take vitals and help out with initial interviews and that kind of thing. The EMS one was a complete waste of time, I sat there for two hours and watched "Paramedics" on Discovery, I shit you not.
One problem I had was that they got wrapped around the axle about the "wilderness" angle. The first three weeks of the course were devoted to it, and the last week to urban EMS. In my opinion, it should have been the other way around, with a good grounding in the EMT stuff before moving on to the outback. Really, it was not that complicated, basically keep them warm and improvised spinal immobilizations and traction devices. There were a few other things and a day devoted to expedition medicine, but I felt it could have been done in less time. Even though the course was called "Wilderness EMT", I felt like we crammed the urban portion.
As for the length of the course, it was very convenient to get EMT certified in a month, but that came after tons of reading. In the beginning it was 40-50 pages a night. It was a whole lot of info to take in that quickly, and it's already slipping away. I am currently waiting on getting a state license so I can work in the field before heading back down range,
because otherwise I'll be stuck with no real hands on experience and rapidly eroding schoolbook knowledge.
Overall, I felt this course was worth taking because I wanted a grounding in emergency medicine, and I was able to get certified by the National Registry at the end of it. But I really didn't learn anything more than I already knew about the things I really wanted to learn, like gunshot wounds and blast injuries. Because this was a basic EMT course, the scope of practice didn't allow for things like chest tubes, needle decompressions, advanced airways, IV therapy, etc. I might have been better served by taking a course that covered this material, but I don't know of any that would result in certification.
I'd reccommend SOLO to anyone looking to get a quick EMT cert in a cool location, but I'd have to say it has only minimal application to working in a hostile environment, and is definitely only the very beginning of a medic's education. If you're headed down range, you might be better off taking a course that focuses on the HRE angle, without all the civilian stuff like pediatrics and the wilderness angle.
This course is NOT to be confused with any kind of tactical care course. It is civilian EMT-B with a "wilderness" angle.
SOLO Schools, New Hampshire Wilderness EMT-B
After coming back from Iraq, I wanted to get some additional medical training before I deployed again. I was pretty happy with the basic stuff I was taught in the Marines and on the job training with some 18Ds, but I wanted to learn as much as possible. Fortunately, I never had to treat anything beyond my limited skills, but I never want to look at a wounded buddy and wonder "What do I do?" So I started looking for courses.
SOLO seemed like the best option, since the course was only a month long and accepted the GI Bill (through a local college). There were a few other similar courses, one at NOLS, but I went with this one. The course tuition was $2495 for a month long course, room and board included.
The campus is in Conway, New Hampshire. It's small and a pretty cool location, the residence hall is right across the road from the classroom building. Before I go any further, I have to mention the food. It's outstanding and included in the tuition. They have a full time chef at the school and he doesn't fuck around.
In my class, all the students were male, mostly outdoors industry types, one a full time NOLS instructor, another a volunteer SAR guy, a couple that worked with at-risk kids, etc.
The focus of this course is on emergency care in the wilderness, defined as being more than an hour from help and with limited resources. I thought that might have some application to the high risk environment. The classes were taught by the lecture method, usually followed by scenarios outside. The instructors were good and clearly knew their stuff. The material was straight out of the Brady EMT textbook, along with the "wilderness" angle from the institutional knowledge of the school and it's instructors. There were two practical application sessions, one at the local EMS service and the other at the local hospital. The hospital was interesting, the staff was great and you got plenty of chances to take vitals and help out with initial interviews and that kind of thing. The EMS one was a complete waste of time, I sat there for two hours and watched "Paramedics" on Discovery, I shit you not.
One problem I had was that they got wrapped around the axle about the "wilderness" angle. The first three weeks of the course were devoted to it, and the last week to urban EMS. In my opinion, it should have been the other way around, with a good grounding in the EMT stuff before moving on to the outback. Really, it was not that complicated, basically keep them warm and improvised spinal immobilizations and traction devices. There were a few other things and a day devoted to expedition medicine, but I felt it could have been done in less time. Even though the course was called "Wilderness EMT", I felt like we crammed the urban portion.
As for the length of the course, it was very convenient to get EMT certified in a month, but that came after tons of reading. In the beginning it was 40-50 pages a night. It was a whole lot of info to take in that quickly, and it's already slipping away. I am currently waiting on getting a state license so I can work in the field before heading back down range,
because otherwise I'll be stuck with no real hands on experience and rapidly eroding schoolbook knowledge.
Overall, I felt this course was worth taking because I wanted a grounding in emergency medicine, and I was able to get certified by the National Registry at the end of it. But I really didn't learn anything more than I already knew about the things I really wanted to learn, like gunshot wounds and blast injuries. Because this was a basic EMT course, the scope of practice didn't allow for things like chest tubes, needle decompressions, advanced airways, IV therapy, etc. I might have been better served by taking a course that covered this material, but I don't know of any that would result in certification.
I'd reccommend SOLO to anyone looking to get a quick EMT cert in a cool location, but I'd have to say it has only minimal application to working in a hostile environment, and is definitely only the very beginning of a medic's education. If you're headed down range, you might be better off taking a course that focuses on the HRE angle, without all the civilian stuff like pediatrics and the wilderness angle.