Our blended course connects your urban medical experience with wilderness medicine and survival training so that you can better care for your patient for extended periods in remote or austere environments.
During a backcountry emergency, you likely won’t have access to the equipment, tools, and medications that you’d typically use in your office, ambulance, or hospital. Besides, would you even know how to quickly build an emergency shelter, start a fire, prepare water to hydrate your patient, or even expedite rescue miles from the nearest road and with no cell signal? Without these skills, the simple reality is that in such environments even a seasoned front-country medical professional can oftentimes be little more than a bystander.
You will learn the dynamics of providing medical care within a backcountry context. You will learn how to manage various elements of a scene more safely for you, your patient, and others. You will learn how to fully assess your patient and consider generally accepted field protocols that can often differ from your state ones. From there, you will learn how to manage a range of injuries and illnesses, from minor to life threatening, for potentially extended periods.
Wilderness EMS training exercise.
Just as importantly, you will learn the same approach to wilderness survival that is taught in the U.S. military to bring home its valuable personnel. You will learn how to assess your survival priorities, use your gear and supplies to manage them, then improvise and adapt as needed. This way, you’ll be able to protect your patient and yourself until responders arrive.
This course will be conducted as a hybrid training. There will be approximately fourteen (14) hours of online instruction from your home that will introduce you to fundamental topics. This will be followed by three (3) days of in-class instruction that will include a mix of lectures, skill sessions, case studies, and training scenarios.
Our WEMT Bridge is accredited by the Pennsylvania Department of Health for pre-hospital providers.
Course Overview
- Timeframe: 35 hours of instruction
- Dates:
- 5-7 December 2025 (8:00 am until 5:00 pm each day)
- 20-21 February 2026 (8:00 am until 5:00 pm each day)
- Location: Next to Crooked Creek Lake Recreation Area, Ford City, Pennsylvania (30 miles Northeast of Downtown Pittsburgh / Easy access from the Pennsylvania Turnpike & State Route 28).
- Fee: $650
- Minimum Age: 18 years old.
- Maximum Group Size: 10
- Requirements: Current certification for EMT, AEMT, Paramedic or PHRN & healthcare provider CPR.
- Certification Length: Three (3) years
- Some of Topics Covered: patient assessment; vital signs; severe bleeding; soft tissue injury; environmental illness; orthopedic injury and dislocations; splinting; allergy and anaphylaxis; venomous bites; first-aid kits; legal considerations; scene management; evacuation decisions.
- Online training: Will be made available approximately one month before your in-person training.
- Description of the Level of Physical Difficulty – Easy to Moderate: This program will involve physical effort on terrain that is relatively flat and includes some hills, over short distances at a slow pace on generally defined and established trails. Activities will involve indoor and outdoor portions in a mix of weather conditions. Activities will require some lifting and squatting. No prior experience in the program is required.
- Continuing-Education Credits: This program is approved by the Pennsylvania Department of Health for thirty-five (35) continuing-education credits for EMT, AEMT, Paramedic, and PHRN.
Frequently Asked Questions:
Why should an experienced medical professional, like a Paramedic, Nurse, or Physician, consider taking a WEMT Bridge course? In some ways, you will find the training and issues very similar to what you see in a front-country setting, but in most other respects you will find it to be very different. First, you will be learning to deal with issues that you rarely find in an urban environment, like venomous bites, acute hypothermia, and lightning strikes. Also, wilderness medical care requires a greater emphasis on improvisation as you won’t have access to the equipment in your ambulance or office. In turn, the standard of care in wilderness environments may differ substantially from your urban protocols. Lastly, most front-country medical providers only deal with patients for brief periods (maybe just the ambulance ride to the hospital) and in teams, but, as a WEMT, you may need to care for your patient for hours or longer … all by yourself.
What happens when I register? We will personally follow up with you with three quick and easy forms for you to complete and return. We will send you a detailed course information sheet which will contain all of the applicable details that you’ll need to prepare and arrive for your training, like suggested gear, specific location, and overnight recommendations.
Where can I stay overnight? Many of our clients travel a distance to attend this course so we want to make your stay as easy and as comfortable as possible. Certainly you can stay in a local hotel or home-share, but our Ford City site allows overnight stays where you can either camp or bunk for a small additional fee, with access to toilets, showers, full kitchen, and a comfortable lounge.
What kind of gear do I need to bring? True North will provide all of the needed training supplies. There is no required text for this course.
To learn more, please contact us.