Expedition and Wilderness Medicine Course
Take your training into the field and open up a whole new world of travel and opportunity.
This four-day Expedition & Wilderness Medicine course in New Hampshire, USA equips healthcare professionals with the essential skills required to practice safely and effectively in remote, resource-limited environments.
Set within the White Mountain National Forest, the course combines focused teaching, practical skills workshops, and immersive wilderness scenarios to strengthen clinical decision-making, leadership, and communication under pressure.
You’ll move beyond classroom-based learning and into realistic expedition-style environments, building confidence in risk assessment, casualty management, and team-based medical care in challenging outdoor settings.
The skills developed during this course are directly transferable to hospital, pre-hospital, humanitarian, and remote clinical practice.
Expedition and Wilderness Medicine Course
Course Content
Foundations of Expedition & Wilderness Medicine
You’ll begin by exploring the core principles that underpin medical care in remote environments. This includes expedition planning, human factors, crew resource management, and structured clinical decision-making when resources, time, and evacuation options are limited. Emphasis is placed on adapting standard medical practice to wilderness and expedition contexts.
Trauma and Acute Care in Remote Settings
This section focuses on the assessment and management of trauma and acute illness when definitive care may be delayed. Through hands-on workshops and outdoor scenarios, you’ll practice primary survey, spinal motion restriction, fracture management, catastrophic hemorrhage control, analgesia, and casualty movement using limited equipment.
Environmental and Expedition Medicine
You’ll cover common medical challenges encountered on expeditions, including cold and heat illness, altitude-related conditions, tropical medicine considerations, water safety, snake and insect envenomation, wound care, public health issues, and expedition medical kit management. Teaching combines concise lectures with practical exercises and case-based discussion.
Search, Rescue, and Operational Decision-Making
The course culminates in a real-time search and rescue scenario where participants apply clinical skills, leadership, communication, and teamwork to locate, treat, and evacuate a simulated casualty. This final phase integrates medical, logistical, and human factors learning, followed by structured debrief and reflection.
Your Teaching Faculty
Andy Miller
Sarah Spelsberg
New Hampshire, USA
What's Included?
Field-Based Training and Practical Workshops
Instruction delivered through hands-on workshops, group activities, and realistic wilderness scenarios.
Expert Faculty and Instruction
Teaching led by experienced medical professionals with backgrounds in expedition, wilderness, and pre-hospital care.
Accommodation, Meals, and Course Support
Accommodation* and meals are provided from the day the course begins through lunch on the final day.
Note that travel costs, travel & medical insurance and personal equipment is not included in the course fee.
*You can book to stay at the venue the night before the course starts, information on how to do this will be shared via your joining instructions, please note this is an additional charged and is booked directly with the venue.
CME and Course Certification
This course has been approved for 29.75 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit(s)™*, awarded through the Wilderness Medical Society.
*please see ‘CME Information’ accordion for more details.
What past attendees say
“The course was excellent, all the people involved were outstanding!!! So approachable and with great knowledge, I would love to hear more of your courses and I hope to take another one with you, it was a great experience!!! ”
“Outstanding course. Very energizing. Made me want more! Probably the best CME course I’ve ever attended. ”
“Pay Christian handsomely enough to drop whatever he is doing to make it to every WEM conference… even if he is currently on Everest or K2. ”
“I just want to thank you again. It was incredible to be around such awesome providers that were so willing, and truly WANTING to teach, and share their stories and experiences. That kind of knowledge is priceless to me. Thank you 🙏 ”
Case Study
The Wilderness Medical Society designates this live activity for a maximum of 29.75 AMA PRA Category 1 Credits™. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.
All education content presented in this activity has been reviewed and validated as appropriate in keeping with sound scientific principles.
