Trainings in Wilderness First Responder, Recertification, and Wilderness First Aid; Family Disaster Preparedness, Medical Care and Self-help; Military: Tactical and Special Operations WFR for Instructor Staff, and Students; Downed Aviators.

First Lead trainings have positively affected the lives of thousands of people. From its launch in 1995 of the "flagship" training - Wilderness First Responder -First Lead has developed a wide array (see "Other Trainings") of other emergency medical courses with a variety of focuses, addressing clients' particular challenges, but always powered by the core principles - the force of the Medic Mind and Medic Heart -- coupled with the applied science of emergency medicine. We train you to think, and function, as a medic does..

Smart Choice!
Focused on concepts and principles, and paired with experiential learning processes, these courses light up the mind and change the muscle memory.

All First Lead trainings yield real and practical shifts in the capabilities we take back out into the world around us.

First Lead guarantees our graduates enduring success - confidence and competence -in their medical care of others.



The "Wilderness Medicine" Legacy

Wilderness Medicine was born out of a response to more people venturing into the wilderness (defined as a remote geographical location more than an hour from definitive care). Quite unlike the classic urban response, which presumes that, depending on one's level of training, each of us can be a "link in the Chain of Response", the wilderness environment presumes you may not have any "chain" -i.e., any other assistance - for some time. The Wilderness Medical Society feels there is an appropriate response to a given problem, and that it should be taught to anyone responsible for care in these circumstances.

This transformative concept has liberated trainers from the restrictive approach of training only to the students' presumed "level of care", to a reality-based approach of "You're there, the problem is there, and no one may come to help you. What needs to get done?"

"How would you diagnose and treat this patient if it was your wife, child or parent and you were alone with no assistance, evacuation or consultation, in an isolated environment, armed with only the basic of medical tools?" -- Introduction, Special Operations Forces Medical Handbook, 2001

Wilderness Medicine educators, trainers and operators recognize the enormous responsibility placed in their hands, to pass along to their students - the ultimate caregivers in the field: this is most serious business, and all our care and skill, and attention given to this patient is not too much. With this shift in the student's ground of being - from "link in the chain" to "I may be all they get" --comes the wanting to get very good at this "wilderness" first aid.




"It's a jungle out there!"

First Lead has found that people want to know more than "what to do until help arrives," and the wilderness medicine model trains you how to function well, on your own if need be, when suddenly it becomes "a jungle out there". Recent events - just ask the residents of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina -- have illustrated that -- in a heartbeat -- you may be, as Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff later said, "...on your own..." New Orleans became a true wilderness in the heart of a major city.

Backcountry or Urban - First Lead has a training for you.
Our mission is to train "everyday people" to be medics when the need arises - to engage emergencies with competence, courage, and confidence - anywhere --home, work, or the wilderness.

Here are some things you will learn:

• how NOT to panic!
  
• how to get beyond fear at the sight of blood.
  
• how to calm the patient (and the bystanders)!
  
• how to save a life - barehanded!
  
• how to figure out what's really going on!
  
• how to do a great job with cuts and scrapes!
  
• how to tell a tummy ache from an "acute abdomen"!
  
• how to improvise effectively from darn-near nothing!
  
• how to be the "best thing" in their "worst day"!
  
• and much, much more.

First Lead! Trainings:

Wilderness First Responder (9 days)
Wilderness First Aid and CPR (3 days)
Wilderness First Responder 3-year Recertification (3 days))
WILDMEDTAC I & II Special Operations (5-9 days)
Disaster Family Medic Training (5 days)
The Executive Medic-High Threat Environments (1) day)
Summer Camp Worker First Aid (1-day)
"Blood and Guts"- first-aid training for kids (1-2 days)
Hard Hat Medic (1 day)
American Red Cross Standard First Aid and CPR (1 day)
American Heart CPR with AED (1 half-day or evening)
American Red Cross Adult CPR (1 half-day or evening)
Festival / Event First Aid Tent Workshop (1 day)
Assisted Living Caregivers' First Aid - (1/2 - 1 day)


Instructor Peter Muckerman