Essential First Aid for Remote Situations

Knowing how to respond in an emergency is always important, but understanding exactly how to manage life threatening situations in remote areas is vital. Whether you’re a keen bushwalker, camper or adventurer, or your work takes you to remote locations, what may be a serious medical situation in a city can quickly turn into life and death scenarios in isolated areas.

While there are basic first aid skills that are essential in all emergency situations, such as CPR, when it comes to remote incidences there are often many environmental circumstances that change how you deliver first aid. Here are some of the essential first aid skills you should know for remote situations. 

Patient Assessment

For those managing a patient who has suffered a severe fall or accident in remote locations, first aid will go far in keeping them calm and administering CPR until emergency assistance arrives. Being able to assess the patient is critical for the effective and correct delivery of first aid. From identifying and assessing broken bones and fractures, to understanding head injuries, respiratory distress, bleeding severity and more, you’ll need to have the skills to thoroughly assess the casualty to be able to provide the right course of action for moving, treating, monitoring and evacuating your patient. 

Moving Injured Patients

In a normal situation, you would rarely move an injured person until paramedics and emergency personnel arrived on the scene, however with remote situations there are a whole range of circumstances that might require you to move the casualty. From dangerous surrounds, to finding shade in extreme heat or needing to attempt medical evacuation, knowing when and how to move injured people in remote situations is one of the vital first aid skills you’ll need in an isolated emergency. 

Monitoring Casualties

If you are in an emergency where medical attention is hours if not a day or two away, or communication has failed, knowing how to monitor a casualty is imperative to ensure you’re adjusting your first aid to suit. Where normal first aid is restricted to managing the initial stages of an injury, remote first aid requires you to know what signs to look out for if your casualty starts going into shock, is showing signs of infection, going in and out of consciousness etc. Additionally, many remote emergencies will be in areas subject to extreme weather and patients can become susceptible to hypothermia, heat stroke and dehydration and frostbite. 

Always ensure you have the right means of communication when travelling in isolated regions to call 000 immediately. For anyone travelling to remote areas, taking a First Aid Course for Remote Areas is essential in keeping both you and other members of your party safe, and potentially saving lives.