Expedition medical training for laypeople & doctors Skip to content

Wilderness Medical Training

Advanced Medicine

What WMT says

Advanced Medicine – the gold standard – is our most comprensive Explorer course for laypeople. In short, Advanced Medicine combines the rich two day Far From Help syllabus with two additional training days which include suturing wounds, giving injections and using intravenous fluids. We recommend this course to our keenest students, vehicle and yacht based expeditions, aid workers, close protection security personnel and others going to particularly remote places where additional medical skills and resources, especially the ability to administer IV fluids, can buy more time in which to care for someone before help arrives or evacuation is affected. The aim of Advanced Medicine is to build confidence and achieve a thorough grounding in providing more comprehensive care in all remote environments to patients who are injured and ill. Advanced Medicine training may enable you to resolve an injury, infection or illness condition in the field without resorting to evacuation and at the same time make your patient more comfortable by the control of pain, nausea and fever.

What students say

Every single session was extremely useful, but the practical sessions were absolutely great!
Very, very, very good. All excellent. (about WMT instructors)
Fantastic course!

Who can attend?

No prior experience is required and anyone without medical training is welcome to attend. Advanced Medicine has been the gold standard in expedition medical training in the UK for nearly 20 years and has been attended by hundreds of teachers, leaders, travelers, explorers, overland drivers, climbers, divers, field researchers, university staff and many others.

Research – what you might need to treat

A Royal Geographical Society study of 1263 medical complaints on expedition found that more than half (51%) were classified either as gastrointestinal upsets (30%) or medical problems (21% – infections, headache, malaria etc.). So there’s more than dramatic broken bones and sucking chest wounds to deal with! Minor illnesses left untreated, especially diarrhoea, can slow a whole team down, reduce productivity and enjoyment and threaten the success of an expedition.

What’s covered on Advanced Medicine?

In short, Advanced Medicine will help you deal with the most common problems that are identified by this RGS research and you’ll learn a range of medical skills and techniques, about the treatment of infections, illness and symptoms and how to treat injuries and special problems. See the full syllabus below.

Skills & Techniques

You’ll learn how to perform a physical examination, measure vital signs (e.g. blood pressure) and take a medical history from a patient. Examination + history = diagnosis, then treatment. Plus you’ll learn about improvised splinting, using neck collars and managing spinal injuries, examining eyes and ears, resuscitation in the wilderness and using a stethoscope. What many students enjoy most is learning how to suture wounds, give intramuscular and intravenous injections and how and when to administor intravenous fluids.

Treating Infections, Illness & Symptoms

First aid courses mainly focus on dealing with injuries but people get ill on expeditions too. You’ll learn how to treat or manage a variety of illnesses and infections such as malaria, diarrhoea, wound infections, asthma and other important, common conditions of the heart, lungs, ears, nose and throat, water works and the gut. Symptom control is vital and you’ll also learn how to control or reduce fever, pain and nausea even if you don’t know what the underlying cause is.

Treating Injuries & Special Problems

Advanced Medicine covers strains, sprains and fractures and other traumatic injuries, in addition to wounds, burns, frostbite, mountain sickness, some tropical diseases, bites and stings, rabies and shock. We’ll also look at vehicle extrication and triage.

Prescription Medications

You can read about using prescription antibiotics, Diamox (for high altitude) or strong pain killers in text books, injectables and IV fluids, but the problem remains of how to obtain these supplies, how to use them appropriately taking into account allergies, contra-indications between medicines (taking more than one at a time) and your legal position. Advanced Medicine training eliminates all these concerns. We’ll tell you what medical supplies to take and authorise you to purchase them. Our comprehensive A5 field manual with nearly 200 pages serves as an aide memoire in the field so you prescribe safely and we thoroughly cover the legal considerations on each course.

Advanced Medicine syllabus

Day 1
Introductions & aims of course
Legal considerations
Expedition medical planning – includes anti-malarials and immunisations
Diagnosis – taking a history
Group work – examples of history taking
Measuring vital signs and examination of chest and abdomen
Cardio-pulmonary resuscitation – latest guidelines
Shock
ABC approach to injured casualties – practical
Moving, lifting and straightening a casualty
Soft tissue injuries and burns

Day 2
Head, neck, chest and abdominal injuries
Fractures, dislocations and use of splints
Common medical conditions. Management of diarrhoea
Cold injuries and altitude sickness
Practical – examining eyes and ears
Tropical problems – heat illness, malaria, bites and stings
Medical kits and supplies Part 1

Day 3
Objectives, review of legal considerations
History taking revisited
Writing medical records – case studies
Triage scenarios
ABC approach to injury and illness conditions – group work
Vehicle scene safety/extrication, helmet removal and pelvic stabilisation
Advanced wound management
Practical – suturing a wound

Day 4
Pain control/anaphylactic shock
intramuscular (i.m.) injections
intravenous (i.v.) fluids and injections
Medical kits & supplies – Part 2
Written examination
Close/depart

Download more information

Download this file for more information about this GOLD standard course.

Advanced Medicine at Glenmore Lodge

We love working at Glenmore Lodge near Aviemore, Scotland. The facilities, food, accommodation and wild setting at the foot of Cairngorm are amazing. These are the most competitively priced WMT Explorer courses and suit clients who prefer a full board/accommodation-one price package for a WMT course and especially those in Scotland of which there are many in the outdoor, academic and sporting communities who no longer have to travel “down south” for WMT training. We are now running courses at the Lodge in spring and late autumn. Aviemore is 30 miles and 45 minutes from Inverness airport which is well served with flights from London, Bristol, Manchester, Birmingham and elsewhere. You can get to Aviemore by bus and train from Inverness. Travel to Aviemore by road is very good and scenic as is rail access. Use SKYSCANNER to research flights or visit the Lodge’s very useful travel page to help plan your journey by all modes. All WMT courses at the Lodge are administered by the Lodge who need to monitor and cross reference WMT bookings and accommodation demands with their other courses. Many delegates plan a holiday around a WMT Lodge course and stay in the area to climb, ski, bike or walk independently or attend another Lodge course to improve their skills or further their outdoor qualifications.

Advanced Medicine in Hong Kong 5-8 June 2013

Advanced Medicine will be run in Hong Kong 5-8 June 2013. Please email local co-ordinator Nick Cotton at Lo Po Chun United World College for details and to book.

Suggested alternative course

Can’t make these course dates? Consider the 3-day intensive Emergency Medicine for Hostile Environments course. The core syllabus is drawn from Advanced Medicine and the trauma management training is beefed up to teach you how to deal with major life threatening trauma such as that inflicted by bullets and blasts. This course runs only a few times a year and strictly with no more than 8 students. This is also the course to consider if your Advanced Medicine ticket has lapsed (more than 3 years since attending). Combat zone veteran emergency medicine consultant Dr Harvey Pynn is the course director.

Course Images