EMS 10 Award Winner Dr Michael Millin and Host Jamie Davis

There is a great need for this service, as evidenced by the fact that more than 40 students enrolled in the inaugural course, offered by WMS in Tucson this year at the Desert Medicine conference. The Wilderness EMS medical director program is innovative in a number of ways:

• The program was a spontaneous initiative from joint members of two separate professional medical societies. This is also the first formal collaboration between NAEMSP and WMS members.
• The program promotes physician involvement in field medical care, one of the goals of the EMS Agenda for the Future.
• All EMS providers, whether in the front country or backcountry, must operate under the medical oversight of a licensed physician. However, until now, there has been no specific training for physicians to provide this type of oversight in wilderness environments or for Wilderness EMS teams. Many physicians have extensive EMS training, but little wilderness medical experience. Similarly, many physicians have deep wilderness or wilderness medical training, but have little exposure to the EMS operational environmental or EMS oversight. The course has no prerequisites and serves both these communities, as well as physicians who have neither wilderness medical nor EMS experience.
• There is a recognized need for standardization, consistency and quality markers in Wilderness EMS. This course, carrying with it the support of NAEMSP and WMS, provides a baseline standard for Wilderness EMS medical directors. Further communication between this year’s students and future classes, after the formal class is over, will continue to grow this benefit for both Wilderness Medicine and EMS.
• The course itself was developed using Delphi methodology for scientific rigor. This is an unusually rigorous way to develop a consensus curriculum.
• The course represents an important historical installment in the development of Wilderness EMS as a specialty. It is the first joint NAEMSP- WMS project, the first time WEMS medical director cognitive and skill content has been identified and standardized (with publication of this curricula pending), and serves as an important stage in standardization of WEMS practice and oversight.