Looking for Seattle First Aid Volunteers

By Tess Wendel and Mary Panza. 

The Seattle First Aid Committee's role is to ensure that our members and leaders have access to classes that allow them to gain and maintain first aid skills. During the past two years, the committee has lost a few core members due to job changes or moves. The Seattle branch is grateful that we've retained Mary Panza as the chair, but she can't do it alone. We are looking for both in-person and remote volunteers to support our community's First Aid education. 

The Mountaineers partners with Remote Medical Training (RMT), a leader in wilderness medicine training and education to provide Wilderness First Aid classes. The WFA course is taught over two days and designed to provide elementary skills in remote care. Based on recommendations from the Wilderness Medical Society and evidence-based research, the curriculum focuses on making sound decisions regarding patient evacuation, as well as skills for extended care. The Wilderness First Aid Courses are hands-on, in an experiential format providing students with the skills and confidence needed to make remote medical care decisions. 

While RMT leads the weekend courses, the First Aid Committee is responsible for all the registration and administrative support, working with other committees to set up courses with Mountaineers leader priority sign ups, and setting up scenario practice sessions. Below is a list of tasks that the First Aid Committee could use assistance with. 

Please fill out the google form below to indicate which pieces you can help with.

Volunteer roles and tasks

• Field Trip leader for scenario practice sessions (in-person)
• Answering student registration questions and triaging sign up issues with member services (remote)
• Posting new courses/activities on the website and making room reservations at the Seattle Program Center (remote)
• Working directly with RMT via email (remote)
• Collaborating/emailing with other committee chairs about having leader-specific WFA courses
• Providing on-call support to service providers for weekend sessions (in-person/remote)
• Instructor and volunteer patient recruitment for scenarios - involves sending individual and bulk instructor request emails (remote) 
• Scenario practice volunteer - evaluator or patient, logistics help, applying scenario make-up (in-person)

FILL OUT VOLUNTEER HELP FORM

Pre-requisites

• Knowledge of Wilderness First Aid curriculum. You do NOT need to have taken WFA or WFR through The Mountaineers
• Ability to collaborate with fellow committee members via email
• Have an account on mountaineers.org (guest or member profile)