The Perceived Benefits of a Medical School Course in Wilderness Medicine

Abstract

Founded in 1983, the Wilderness Medical Society has since grown in numbers and stature. Its specific purpose has been ‘‘to encourage, foster, support, and conduct activities or programs concerned with life sciences which may improve the scientific knowledge of the membership and the general public in matters related to wilderness environments and human activities in these environments.’’1 It was natural that this society and its goals would attract the interest of medical students and medical residency programs. A number of formal courses have been established in medical schools to expose students to the many disciplines of wilderness medicine. The Wilderness Medical Society sponsors it own course for thirdand fourth-year medical students, and courses also are taught at the University of Massachusetts Medical School; Stanford University; the University of South Carolina; University of California, San Francisco, Fresno; and the University of New Mexico. The University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine established a wilderness medicine ‘‘minicourse’’ in 1995. During the course, approximately 16 medical students live in a wilderness setting in central New Jersey for 2 weeks in January. Their days and evening are devoted to didactic lectures, demonstrations, and practical applications in the various areas of wilderness medicine. (An overview of the curriculum is listed in the Appendix.) This course is an intensive couple of weeks and requires much more preparation and organization by the students and the faculty than do standard courses. Furthermore, it does not appear to have the obvious direct clinical applications for hospital or office care of the more traditional courses offered at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and most other medical schools. Rather, the Wilderness Medicine course at the University of Pennsylvania is designed to teach students to deal with emergency medical scenarios in remote, outdoor settings. Therefore, we were curious to see how often and in what