About us

What is wilderness medicine?

The discipline of Wilderness Medicine includes the practice and study of expedition medicine, tropical medicine, medicine in remote environments including remote area trauma management, extreme environment survival physiology (high-altitude, cold and heat extremes), natural environmental disasters, hazardous flora and fauna (marine and terrestrial, including animal attacks), immersion and near-drowning, barometric medicine, search and rescue and casualty evacuation.

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What is the Society?

The Sydney University Wilderness Medicine Society gives members the opportunity to learn how to provide clinical care for patients in remote areas, while also learning valuable outdoor skills beneficial to both those who wish to pursue a career in wilderness medicine, and those who have a keen interest. The Society also gives members the opportunity to meet, and learn from, doctors and other health professionals who have worked in this area.

The society runs both weekend and evening events including camping weekends in National Parks involving training in medical and basic outdoor skills covering a wide range of scenarios. Weekends are also spent with established rescue teams (e.g. State Emergency Service, Special Casualty Access Team), emergency physicians and expedition doctors, giving members an opportunity to learn a range of skills from trained professionals.

A series of informal talks are run throughout the year given by doctors and other health professionals that have worked in wilderness and remote area medicine. These include expedition doctors (high-altitude, polar, tropics, desert), representatives from medical organizations (Red Cross, Medcins Sans Frontiers, Royal Flying Doctors Service), remote researchers, and Armed Forces personnel. Other events include screenings of documentaries and research paper discussion evenings enabling members to learn about the field of wilderness and expedition medicine.

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The committee, 2008

The Wilderness Medicine Society committee for 2008 is:

President: Gareth Andrews
president@wildernessmedicinesociety.org

Vice-president: Daniel Trevena
vice-president@wildernessmedicinesociety.org

Secretary: Mandy Beech
secretary@wildernessmedicinesociety.org

Treasurer: Gordon Fowler
treasurer@wildernessmedicinesociety.org

Sponsorship officer: Tori Casey
sponsorship@wildernessmedicinesociety.org

Assets officer: Nathan Creber
assets@wildernessmedicinesociety.org

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Resources

Links

Suggested Reading

WARRELL D, ANDERSON S EXPEDITION MEDICINE 2nd Ed 2002 Royal Geographical Society, Profile Books.

Too often travel to out-of-the-way places ends in difficulties - and most are avoidable. The key to avoiding accidents and illness is proper planning and preparation, and Expedition Medicine shows how that should be done. It also sets out what to do if things go wrong. This is a completely revised edition. It has been comprehensively updated to take into account new research findings and medicines. It is written by world-class experts and is full of practical tips and advice, as well as extensive details about first-aid kits, emergency procedures and evacuation routines. There are sections on every type of travel, from desert to mountain, canoeing to diving and off-road driving to walking. Vaccinations, medicines and hygiene are all covered. It would be foolish for those who travel or work in remote and challenging environments not to study this book before starting off.

OXFORD HANDBOOK OF TROPICAL MEDICINE, Michael Eddleston, Stephen Pierini

THE ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY EXPEDITION HANDBOOK Shane Winser (Editor)

This expedition handbook contains advice ranging from how to survive in the rainforest or desert to caving and canoeing, from first aid and fundraising to photography, navigation, insurance and leadership.

LIFE AT THE EXTREMES, Frances Ashcroft

In Life at the Extremes Frances Ashcroft, Professor of Physiology at Oxford University, investigates the related questions: how much can the human body endure? What can it survive, what causes it to fail? Why can some creatures tolerate conditions that would kill others? The extremes in question, to which bodies are periodically subjected, either voluntarily or not, include the limits of endurable temperature and pressure; physical constraints on speed; the weightlessness, vacuum and utter cold of space; and a number of environments that, for various reasons, are so unpleasant as to limit drastically the options of life-forms that attempt to inhabit them. By its nature, such a subject does not lend itself to continuous narrative, and Life at the Extremes may be best regarded as a kind of anthology into which one can dip to pull out examples, cheerful or gruesome, of what can happen to living tissue at the extremes. Here is Mr Blagden, accompanied by some eggs, a raw steak and a dog, entering a room heated to 105 degrees C, in the late 18th century. Fifteen minutes later the steak and eggs were cooked but Mr Blagden and the dog were not. A clear and absorbing explanation of mammalian heat regulation follows. Here are dreadful pictures of frost-bitten extremities; Sir Roger Bannister breaking the four-minute mile; a frog frozen solid in a block of ice but still alive and well; divers and the bends; astronauts and the redistribution of bodily fluids in weightlessness; flamingos enduring their caustic soda lakes; the physiology of the chilblain. Frances Ashcroft writes warmly and with wit: her many illustrative anecdotes are well chosen and provoke much thought about how life copes with, and adapts to, the physical circumstances it finds itself in. –Robin Davidson

TOUCHING THE VOID by Joe Simpson

This book is an illustrated account of the ascent of the west face of the 21,000ft peak, Siula Grande, in the Peruvian Andes. The author and his climbing partner, Simon Yates, achieved the summit in June 1985 before disaster struck. A few days later, Yates staggered into base camp, exhausted and frostbitten, to tell their non-climbing companion that Joe was dead. For three days Simon Yates, believing that he had caused his friend’s death, suffered torment and guilt. However, a cry in the night led them to Joe, badly injured and delirious, crawling through the snow. Far from causing his friend’s death, Simon had paradoxically saved his life when he cut the rope. What happened and how they dealt with the resulting psychological trauma is the subject of this book.

INTO THIN AIR by Jon Krakauer

Into Thin Air is a riveting first-hand account of a catastrophic expedition up Mount Everest. In March 1996, Outside magazine sent veteran journalist and seasoned climber Jon Krakauer on an expedition led by celebrated Everest guide Rob Hall. Despite the expertise of Hall and the other leaders, by the end of summit day eight people were dead. Krakauer’s book is at once the story of the ill-fated adventure and an analysis of the factors leading up to its tragic end. Written within months of the events it chronicles, Into Thin Air clearly evokes the majestic Everest landscape. As the journey up the mountain progresses, Krakauer puts it in context by recalling the triumphs and perils of other Everest trips throughout history. The author’s own anguish over what happened on the mountain is palpable as he leads readers to ponder timeless questions.

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