Adventure Medicine has many fantastic instructors, and Aron is one of them. This weekend he's holding another course in Wilderness Life Support so we took the opportunity to ask him three questions.
1. What is the most enjoyable part of wilderness medicine?
Combining my two biggest interests: medicine and the outdoors. I love being a doctor and I love being in nature! Thanks to my advanced training, I've realized how vulnerable you are if something happens a bit away from the safety of civilization. At the same time, you can do so much with very little. Building a stretcher out of a jacket? I might not have thought of that or been able to figure it out in an emergency situation if it weren't for wilderness medicine.
2. What is the best part of being an instructor?
All the encounters with like-minded people: outdoors enthusiasts, adventurers, extreme sports enthusiasts, young and old, who share the interest of being out in the woods, mountains, and sea.
3. Have you found use for your skills as a doctor in the hospital?
I feel more confident in emergency situations in general and trauma contexts in particular. Learning to think outside the box, improvise, and work with the resources available is also useful as a doctor.
