On Sunday evening July 25th Tony Islas MD, president of the Wilderness Medical Society (WMS) hosted a meeting of wilderness medicine providers at the summer meeting of the WMS. All of the major providers were represented, including the Red Cross and members of ski patrol, representatives from AORE and WEA, Todd Minor from Cornell, the military and people just interested in local wilderness medicine education and a lively discussion. It was a great turnout of people and a pivotal evening for wilderness medicine.

Tony spoke of the role of the WMS in wilderness medicine education, and his desire that the society serve as a forum for discussion and a source of expertise for the industry. I’m excited about this agenda. We are the educators of the lay public and outdoor professionals. An active line of communication between the wilderness medicine instructor and the society will be a good thing–enhancing consistency and quality. He stated that the society is not interested in developing or endorsing a specific curriculum, in program accreditation or instructor credentialing. They do want to take the Scope of Practice documents our working group has developed and publish these as consensus position statements in the Journal of Wilderness and Environmental Medicine. It’s a sound endorsement of our work and will make the document available in the medical literature.

We have some more work to do incorporating feedback we have received, especially some thoughtful comments from AORE. We’ll have one more chance for anyone interested to comment in the months ahead. We’ll then craft the SOP’s into publishable form.

We’ve been asked about program accreditation, instructor credentialing, consistent certification lengths and quality assurance. These may be issues we want to address down the line, but first things first. Let’s get these SOP’s done.

Tod Schimelpfenig
Curriculum Director
WMI of NOLS