Abstract
Unlike urban emergency care and medicine, which are highly regulated by both the government and professional organizations, wilderness emergency care and wilderness medicine protocols are based on a voluntary consensus of experts and educators. So it is not surprising that most wilderness emergency care programs evolved locally to meet local needs. Those who organize and teach such programs often belong to national organizations such as the Wilderness Medical Society and informally exchange ideas when they meet at conferences, but otherwise there is little connection or cooperation among them.
If other regions emulate the organization described by the authors of this article, this lack of connection and cooperation may change. Their concept is to bring together people who run programs in a region to pool information and to share resources, rather than trying to impose standards or an overall plan from above. This collaboration has already generated new programs and created alliances with other organizations that have related or complementary goals. It has also enabled members to negotiate with state agencies as an organized group in which all of the major players are represented.
The authors’ website (