Author: Barry Roberts

WMT has 11 BP cuffs and more than 20 stethascopes to give away to a good home in one job lot. Please get in touch by email and we’ll gladly courier them to a UK address. They are not expensive models but hopefully someone can make use of them, at least for training. (Sorry – but we can’t post single items.)

Congratulations to ICE MAIDEN Major Nicola Wetherill for making the 2019 honours list and being awarded an MBE. Nics will be teaching with us in Chamonix 21-25 January on Expedition Medicine.

The Greenland Caves Project is seeking a medic to join a 3-4 week climate-science research expedition to Northeast Greenland (80.377, -21.734) in July-August, 2019. The c. 8-person expedition will be drilling rock samples from short horizontal caves (max. 100m long), which are accessed via steep scree slopes, short climbs, and abseiling. Additionally, the area will be surveyed for previously undiscovered caves that will be explored and documented for the first time. Previous expedition experience, competance with rope work, and a friendly team-focussed personality are essential, but caving experience is not. Expenses and a wage will be paid. For further details please contact Gina Moseley (). Website: www.greenlandcavesproject.org Instagram: @greenland_caves

In our last publication of 2018, the Christmas Newsletter is packed with photos, videos, intersting news, an update about Penthrox, 2018 Morocco expedition report, advice on getting ski fit, 2019 course news, dates and developments and much more. Read it here. Happy holidays to you all!

Escape….to the wilderness is the title of Dr Harvey Pynn’s article in the Emergency Medical Journal Supplement (Dec ’18). In this thoughful piece, Harvey proposes that one antidote to the pressures of hospital work is taking a break and getting away to practice remote medicine where “rewilding” can lower the tempo and allow space to reflect and regenerate. 

Hear more wise words when Harvey is directing the Expedition Medicine course in Chamonix 21-25 January.

Read more here: EMJ Dec 2018 Harvey Pynn article.

Welcome and many thanks to guest blogger WMT’s Dr Elspeth Murray (not pictured!) – surgical trainee and ski instructor. Elspeth attended Expedition Medicine in Chamonix in 2017, which is coming up 21-25 January, followed by Mountain Medicine on Skis (Feb & March).

Getting ski fit
The ski season is on the way. Can’t you almost see the blue skies and fresh snow? Taste the raclette and gluhwein? Feel the agony of second day DOMs?!

You said last year you’d get pre-season ski fit, but this is your year; the year you actually do it! Beat all your friends’ top speeds on Ski Tracker, when you finally pop out those steezy tricks at the snow park and when you wake up each morning feeling like a supple leopard. See below for tips and links which are sure to promote you from a ‘reds, no blacks’ skier, to the ‘double black diamond’ skier you know you can be.

In essence:
• Get generally fit again – whatever you enjoy; be it cycling, swimming, running, yoga, Zumba…use your ski holiday as motivation to keep up your baseline fitness during the dark nights. Think about joining a circuits class or a functional fitness/CrossFit style gym.
• Squat, squat, squat! Leg day the skier shalt not skip. Skiing and snowboarding is really a day of continual squatting. Great exercises to condition legs include squats, squat jumps, wall squats and lunges.
• Think about the midline – when taking on difficult terrain, your core is where your stability lives. Get planking!
• And stretch – now as part of your work-outs, after a gentle ski warm up run and après ski.

Online training resources & inspiration:
1. For an in-depth overview of alignment and key workout moves see this Telegraph article
2. Video of the moves used in most ‘ski workouts’, for gym novices
3. For an easy workout you can do at home, this video by Olympic skier Chemmy Alcott
4. If apps are your thing try Home Workout – No Equipment (also available on android)
5. Stretch – Yoga with Adrienne for people who don’t like yoga
6. And for an advanced training regime …

Congratulations to Dr Paddy Morgan who recently won the Association of Air Ambulances award for Doctor of the Year 2018. Paddy is a very popular and long-standing senior WMT instructor who began with us as a medical student on a WMT course. He’s a Critical Care Doctor with the Great Western Air Ambulance Charity – GWAAC – that covers Bristol, Bath and North East Somerset, South Gloucestershire, Gloucestershire, North Somerset and surrounding areas.

Medical Director Dr Harvey Pynn (also a GWAAC doctor) said “Paddy was nominated for the award for being an all round awesome doctor but for a particular case where he resuscitated a cold, lifeless young man on the muddy banks of the Severn Estuary. Paddy’s expertise in cold wet places made him the perfect man for this job. The patient had a core temperature of 18 degrees C, was resuscitated in the mud, on the muddy path, in the muddy ambulance and all the way to the then muddy hospital, put on CPB (cardiopulmonary bypass) at the Bristol Royal Infirmary and after a prolonged hospital stay has been discharged with an almost full neurological recovery.”

Great job Paddy and very well deserved from your proud WMT colleagues.

WMT is pleased to pass on this West African remote medical officer job opportunity. Please contact CCI directly for more information and mention you heard about this via WMT.

Critical Care International (CCI) are recruiting for positions in southern Mali starting this December. Critical Care International (https://critcareint.com/) is a UK-based healthcare company established in 2016 by a team with extensive international experience and pre-hospital, critical care, military and acute secondary care expertise.

The concept and guiding philosophy of the company is to deliver high quality remote healthcare for companies working in low-resource environments and to utilise the financial support of these commercial clients, with the quality and training of the deployed doctors, to deliver ethical, sustainable, evidence-based community development projects in the areas of operation (https://www.facebook.com/critcareint). We have been operating in Mali since 2016 where we provide healthcare to approximately 1000 workers employed at a UK-owned gold mine.

Who: we are looking for doctors at least three years post qualification (exceptional candidates with two years post qualification may be considered) with ALS and ATLS/PHTLS qualifications. You should be comfortable working independently and some distance from secondary care facilities as part of a small team of one other doctor and four nurses. Leadership and management skills are pivotal to the role as you will be working closely with the mine management team to ensure safety of the workforce. You will be working in a 5-bed clinic with one other doctor and four Malian nurses and supported clinically by CCI’s 24/7 expert advisory team and the operations team.

When: 6 week on/off rotations beginning in December 2018

Why: it’s a varied and interesting position involving provision of primary care, emergency care and occupational health services to all 1000 mine employees. The major aspects of the role include:
– Outpatient care: predominantly provision of primary care and tropical medicine.
– Emergency response: including pre-hospital ambulance response, stabilisation and ongoing care within the clinic and transfers to secondary care facilities.
– Teaching and mentoring of the clinical team. Furthermore, you will be responsible for running training programmes for mine workers e.g. first aid and medical response to cyanide intoxication
– Design and development of a range of risk management documents including medical emergency response and mass casualty plans and cyanide poisoning management protocols.
– All expenses paid, including flights, accommodation and food, alongside a competitive salary.

How:
– If you are interested in the position, please send a CV to
– If you would like to stay up to date and hear about future job vacancies, please follow us on Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/critcareint

Dr Marcus F. Stevens BMBCh, BA (Hons.) Oxon, DMCC

Operations Manager
Critical Care International Ltd

Website: www.critcareint.com
Email:
Mobile: +44 7595 544971

WMT welcomes Major Nicola Wetherill, GP trainee, to the teaching team in Chamonix for a packed Expedition Medicine programme 21-25 January. Nics was co-leader of the all-female Ice Maidens team that journeyed 1700km coast to coast across Antarctica on skis for 62 days pulling sleds using muscle power alone.

WMT is inviting abstract submissions, and if accepted, then POSTERS to be displayed 21-25 January 2019 at the Expedition Medicine course in Chamonix. Medics will be familiar with this format; laypeople less so. An example of a poster is below. This example is research based but this doesn’t have to be the case. A layperson (Explorer course alumni for example) could submit an abstract based on their experience providing medical care in the field (a case study) or any other aspect of health care in an austere setting. Abstracts are to be submitted by email in 200 words. You don’t have to attend the course to participate.

Full details on how to submit an abstract and prepare a poster: WMT call for abstracts v2

(Higher resolution poster WMT poster example)