Dealing With a Medical Emergency in the Wilderness

Video Transcript

"So, once you've decided that the scene is safe, the next step is to go ahead and make a plan of action. First of all, what you want to do is you want to go ahead and treat any "hurried cases", which are: people not breathing, heartbeats are stopped, severe bleeding. Anything that's life-threatening - poisoning, choking. Anything where vital signs and brainpower are immediately diminishing and blood fluids are dissipating quickly. That's whenever you've got to immediately solve the problem. So you go ahead and solve those. Those are considered "hurried cases." The next thing you've got to do? Send somebody for help. If you're the only person there, get those hurried cases taken care of, control the bleeding, make sure they're breathing, make sure they have a heartbeat, make sure that their vital signs are there, and get help. Go ahead and take yourself. I know that can be scary, but you've got to tell the victim they're going to be fine. If someone else is there, go ahead and send them. Immediately after that, you've got to go ahead, if you're still remaining there and not going for help yourself, you've got to go ahead and treat the victim for shock. No matter what the case is, most injuries in the wilderness, a little bit of shock sets it. You're very far from society, you're far from doctors, you're far from people help - the actual medical help that you need, so shock sets in pretty quickly. You can get deliria, or you can get very manic stages, but you've got to go ahead and take care of that. And the next thing you've got to do is go ahead and treat for other first aid. Go ahead and do a body scan, make sure that everything else is working. Keep the person communicating with you. Keep them awake, and make sure that everything is operating properly outside of those hurried cases that you already treated. The next thing is, you've got to make a plan of action, you've got to get them to medical attention. That's the bottom line. Get them out of the wilderness and to safety, and in front of a doctor."