The wilderness doctor is in
Accidents will happen, and with the boom in outdoor sports, hiking and adventure travel, more of them are happening in the wild. This has left many a snake-bit hiker in the wilderness of medical care.
Few schools teach wilderness medicine, a subspecies of emergency medicine that treats everything from the broken bones of climbers to divers with the bends. To fill the void, Stanford University has launched the first fellowship in wilderness medicine.
The program will be headed by Eric Weiss, an assistant professor of surgery at Stanford and author of “A Comprehensive Guide to Wilderness and Travel Medicine.” Weiss, a trekking, kayaking, adventuring M.D., will train physicians in outdoor and travel injuries, a realm that spans altitude sickness, equatorial bugs and trauma from falls.
Field study could include a posting at Everest base camp, where Stanford has supplied staff for the Himalayan Rescue Assn. No doubt just what the outdoor doctor ordered.
-- Joe Robinson
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