Wilderness First Aid (WFA)

Be empowered to explore! Our Wilderness First Aid program is a comprehensive introduction to Wilderness Medicine designed for outdoor enthusiasts with no prior medical experience, or, entry-level professional guides working in remote settings*.  In our WFA class, you will learn the first aid skills necessary to treat medical problems, injuries, and environmental emergencies in wilderness or remote locations.  You’ll also gain vital skills in patient assessment, evacuation, and how to communicate with emergency medical services (EMS). 

*This certification is appropriate for guides leading half-, full-day, or overnight trips with reliable cell or satellite phone service, and where outside assistance is typically available within a few hours. For trips in more remote settings and higher risk activities like mountaineering or paragliding, we recommend the Wilderness First Responder course.

Wilderness First Aid Course Requirements & Prerequisites

Get the most out of your course by completing homework before class and taking the time to study (optional)!

• Complete your online CPR Training*. 
• Instructors can make reasonable accommodations whenever possible to support individual needs, however you'll need to be able to stand, sit, and kneel throughout the course. 
• Full attendance is required for certification.
• Study the course materials ahead of time (optional). Materials will be provided in your confirmation email.
• Participants should be comfortable performing a full patient assessment, which involves gently and professionally touching a patient from head to toe.
• Prepare by exploring a wealth of firsthand rescuer stories and real-world experiences on our blog.

Feel free to reach out to our office with any specific questions before the course.

*CPR training is not included in WFA courses from January through August of 2025. For all WFA courses beginning in September 2025, Adult CPR training will be included. If you need CPR please visit our Adult CPR/AED or Adult/Child/Infant CPR/AED class pages to enroll in a CPR course.

Wilderness First Aid Course Format & Skill Evaluations

Wilderness First Aid packs a tremendous amount of information into a short amount of time.  This 16-hour in-person course is a combination of lecture, skills practice, and scenarios. Your instructors will introduce a topic and its objective, deliver a brief lecture, and then guide you through skills practice for that topic. Throughout the class, you’ll master those skills in multiple hands-on scenarios with instructors providing direct feedback at every step of the way. There is no written test for the WFA course, but students must be able to perform the skills. 

During practice sessions and scenarios, you’ll have the opportunity to work with classmates you feel comfortable with. In wilderness and austere medicine, resources are limited, so you will rely on your eyes, ears, and hands to assess injuries and illness in the field. Students must be comfortable performing physical assessments on one another. Professional, diagnostic touch is an essential part of wilderness medicine, and learning to use it effectively is key to providing care in remote settings.

Wilderness First Aid Curriculum Details

Wilderness Medicine vs Urban EMS: In urban medicine, response and transport to the hospital likely take minutes.  In wilderness medicine, we expect extended patient care times of hours or days. An urban ambulance and fire company arrives with an array of equipment; in the mountains, you may only have a small first aid kit and have to improvise.  That’s why we sometimes refer to wilderness or remote medicine as “austere medicine.”  In front-country settings, we usually leave lifting and moving patients to professional responders, but in wilderness it’s often, if not always, necessary to move injured or sick people both for their immediate safety, extended care, and evacuation.  Finally, you face a higher risk of environmental issues ranging from extremes of head and cold to lightning, avalanche, and rock fall, as well as bites and stings from a wide range of creatures, depending on where you work or recreate.

To manage these differences, wilderness first aid students learn:

Patient Assessment: Wilderness First Aid students will learn how to assess a scene and evaluate patients for life-threatening injuries and illnesses. They will learn how to perform a secondary assessment by taking vitals, interviewing patients using the SAMPLE acronym for medical emergencies, and performing a physical examination in the event of injury emergencies.

SOAP Note: WFA students will learn how to document all their findings during a patient assessment on a SOAP note (SOAP stands for Subjective, Objective, Assessment, and Plan). 

Life Threats:  The most critical focus of any emergency is identifying and treating life-threatening problems.  You’ll learn how to manage airway and breathing problems, circulatory issues, including cardiac arrest and severe bleeding, shock, spinal injuries, and life-threatening heat and cold. 

Musculoskeletal Injuries: As one of the most common injury types in the outdoors, stabilizing musculoskeletal injuries is a key skill for the WFA student.  You’ll learn about fractures, sprains, strains, and dislocations, as well as techniques like splinting to manage pain and prevent further injury.

Wound Care:  In the city, you might just put a bandage on it, but when you’re far from the hospital, the risk of infection is much more serious.  You’ll learn about different types of wounds and how to clean and bandage them using pressure irrigation and multiple types of bandages.

Gastrointestinal:  GI problems are the bane of the backcountry traveler’s existence.  In WFA we discuss a variety of issues ranging from gas and bloating through appendicitis and ectopic pregnancy, with a focus on identifying and evacuating more serious conditions. 

Other Medical Emergencies: You’ll gain a fundamental understanding of a wide variety of other common medical problems like stroke, seizure, diabetic emergencies, poisoning, and drug overdose. 

Environmental Emergencies:  WFA students leave class knowing how to treat for environmental conditions.  Preventing heat loss in hypothermic patients, aggressively cooling those suffering from heat related illnesses, preventing and treating altitude problems, and managing a plethora of bites and stings are some of the topics that your WFA course may cover.  We focus the curriculum on the needs of each particular group, so a climbing club will spend more time discussing altitude, whereas a dive team will learn more about immersion/submersion. 

What to Wear and Bring to a Wilderness First Aid Course?

You don’t have to bring anything beyond comfortable indoor/outdoor clothing that can get dirty and a good attitude to take a WFA course. However, we have some recommendations to enhance your learning: 

• Dress in layers to switch between the indoor classroom and outside.  
• Wear comfortable clothes - you’ll be sitting, kneeling, and lying on the ground.  
• We use makeup (called “moulage”) to simulate injuries in practice scenarios.  No one has to wear moulage, but it does increase the realism and quality of training.  Please wear clothes you do not mind getting dirty or getting moulage on. Quality outdoor clothing is not cheap, and we don’t want to ruin your nicest Arc’teryx jacket! 

We provide all the tools necessary to learn and practice wilderness medicine skills, but you are welcome to bring any personal equipment you would like to practice with.  A backpack is particularly handy for carrying the various first aid supplies you’ll be learning to use.  

If you would like feedback on your personal first aid kit, feel free to bring that as well.

Certifications Earned with Wilderness First Aid at BMT

Upon successful completion of the Wilderness First Aid course, students will earn:

• Wilderness First Aid certification, 
• CPR Seattle Epinephrine Autoinjector & Anaphylaxis Training Certificate (WA State Approved)
• HSI Adult CPR certification card (for classes starting in September 2025 and beyond) 

WFA graduates are often employed as trip leaders in college outdoor programs and residential camps or as guides or instructors in low-risk activities and environments.  Graduates of the Wilderness First Aid class may recertify with another WFA class or consider upgrading to Wilderness First Responder for a higher standard of care with more knowledge, practice, and scenario time.

Accreditation

Backcountry Medical Training follows the certification standards set forth by the Wilderness Medicine Educational Collaborative, the only professional organization currently setting standards for the Wilderness First Aid course and Wilderness Medicine courses.