Outdoor Medicine: Management of Wilderness Medical Emergencies

Manage hiking, camping, backpacking, and outdoor emergencies

There's never a good place for a medical emergency, but some locations are much worse than others. If you are out in nature, far from help, when the unthinkable happens, you must be prepared. Outdoor Medicine is your handy, portable, easy-to-understand guide that helps you to follow the correct course of action. Whether it's illness, injury, or life-or-death conditions, author Patrick Brighton, M.D., FACS, is there to lend his experience in assessing and managing backcountry emergencies. The author's expertise--as a board-certified trauma surgeon and a mountaineer, climber, kayaker, and member of a mountain rescue team--has allowed him to develop concise descriptions of the diagnosis, treatment options, and evacuation strategies for several common medical emergencies.

This tabbed booklet is organized by type of injury, so you can quickly reference the information you need to evaluate and treat the condition. There's no need to wade through time-consuming data that you won't use. The easily digestible instructions help you to assess the situation and decide how to proceed, with tips on what to do and what not to do. The guide also takes into consideration the variable challenges you might face: limited resources, weather, victim/rescuer capabilities, and evacuation options.

With strategies based on the latest research from the American College of Surgeons, the American Heart Association, and Dr. Brighton's decades of experience, you can be certain that you're getting the best advice available. So get this pocket-sized guide to outdoor medicine, and hope that you never have to use it--but take comfort in knowing that it's there if you do.

Patrick Brighton is a board-certified general and trauma surgeon. A Fellow in the American College of Surgeons for 23 years, he has evaluated and surgically managed thousands of critically injured trauma patients, including those from dozens of mass-casualty situations. An avid alpinist and ice climber, Dr. Brighton currently spends most of his free time as a member of the Ouray Mountain Rescue Team in Ouray, Colorado. Dr. Brighton also teaches wilderness medicine courses in the U.S. and in South America.