Product Description

You and your group are on the adventure of a lifetime, far from civilization, surrounded by wilderness. Someone gets hurt or sick. What do you do? With Dr. William Forgey's comprehensive Wilderness Medicine: Beyond First Aid in hand, you can recognize, assess, and treat many kinds of medical emergencies. This illustrated text is essential reading for anyone from trip leaders, guides, and search and rescue groups to EMTs, paramedics, and physicians who must provide immediate care when access to a medical facility is difficult or impossible. Learn how to survey, assess, and stabilize the victim and the medical situation, what questions to ask to gain necessary vital information, how to manage physical symptoms as well as care for wounds and orthopedic injuries and much more.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9746 in Books
• Brand: Globe
• Published on: 1999-09-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780762704903
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From the Back Cover
You and your group are on the adventure of a lifetime, far from civilization, surrounded by wilderness. Someone gets hurt or sick. What do you do? With Dr. William Forgey's comprehensive Wilderness Medicine: Beyond First Aid in hand, you can recognize, assess, and treat many kinds of medical emergencies. This illustrated text is essential reading for anyone from trip leaders, guides, and search and rescue groups to EMTs, paramedics, and physicians who must provide immediate care when access to a medical facility is difficult or impossible. Learn how to survey, assess, and stabilize the victim and the medical situation, what questions to ask to gain necessary vital information, how to manage physical symptoms as well as care for wounds and orthopedic injuries and much more. (5 1/2' x 8 1/2', 256 pages, charts, illustrations)

Customer Reviews

The one book you really need foran expedition
I lead canoe trips in northern Canada for the Science Museum of Minnesota. Many of our expeditions take us above the Arctic Circle. I'm no expert in Wilderness Medicine--and that's why I rely on this book. Doc Forgey knows wild places: he has a fly-in cabin deep in Northern Manitoba. Forgey understands that "evacuation", per se, is often not an option in a genuine wilderness setting. This book clearly and quickly pinpoints solutions to problems and tells you how to deal with them. Forgey provides a host of medical options: you can choose sophisticated Rx medicines, or stick with over-the-counter stuff. "Doc" lays out all options and provides alternatives. A superb index provides fast reference to problems--and, this handy little book fits right in your backpack. It's worth every penny--and each new revision is more thorough than the last. I also heartily recommend Buck Tilton's excellent book, Medicine For The Backcountry. Get them both and you'll be covered for everything.

Contest with Nature
Living out in the wild, in the wilderness, is a contest with Nature. Most of the time, man wins the contest, but sometimes ... stuff happens.

Chapter One is about Assessment and starts with that key question: scene safe? Then Dr Forgey takes his reader through the ABCD's, vital signs, levels of consciousness, head to toe examination, shock, respiration rates, heart rates, and CPR. (The numbers for chest compressions and breaths has been changed by the AHA since Dr Forgey updated this book, but that is a minor issue.)

Chapter Two is about body system management. The focus of this chapter is on the systems in the head but the abdomen and reproductive system are given sections as well. There is also a very good, short section on poisoning from food poisoning to shellfish poisoning.

Chapter Three covers soft tissue wounds and treatments ... and suturing and stapling.

Chapter Four covers orthopedic injuries from head to foot.

Chapter Five covers bites and stings and anaphylactic shock. Interest-ingly Dr Forgey finds that rubber suction cups are as worthless as mouth suction. His lone endorsement is the Sawyer Extractor (which is available from Amazon.com).

Chapter Six is on infectious disease. Dr Forgey lists the most signif-icant *wilderness* diseases for North America and the world should one be contesting Nature abroad.

Chapter Seven's environmental injuries include hypothermia, heat stress, high altitude related illnesses, and ... being struck by lightning. Step current is caused when lightning hass struck and the current spreads out like a wave across the ground and the victim's feet are different distances from the strike point. Since the body has less resistance than the ground, a circuit is completed.

There are two useful appendices at the end of the book.

I am EMS certified and as a BLS instructor. I had a few quibbles with Dr Forgey such as his choice of prescription medications to list in one of the appendices. However I had no major disagreements and found the book to be more easily readable than any EMS book I have read. Lots of nuts and bolts and no fluff.

Also as I write this review, I am preparing a first aid segment for a TCLEOSE course on mantracking. Dr Forgey's book provided me with a lot of detail and anecdotes to include. However just as the title says this book is about wilderness medicine *beyond* first aid.

buy this book
Buy it because you are planning that trip where you'll be three days from civilization.

And keep it around cause life tends to throw things you're way when your'e out and about.

This is my most tattered book. I use it for every medical thing I come across. It not only can set you up to stabilize pretty much any situation and give you the time you need to get help. It will also tell you what to do when you step on an sea urchin or accidentally burn yourself making coffee the same way you make coffee everyday.

a fantastic reference