How it's structured
Lessons run 20–45 minutes each and are built for phones as much as laptops. Every lesson ends with scenarios (commit to a plan before you read the reasoning) and a quiz that explains every answer. Nothing is timed. Your progress stays in your own browser unless you turn on progress sync, and you can repeat anything as often as you like. Take them in order. The first five lessons (safety, assessment, airway, bleeding, shock) are the foundation, and every lesson after them puts those skills to work on a specific problem.
The syllabus
| # | Lesson | Practical skills you come away with |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Provider Safety | Scene size-up, Standard Precautions (gloves, every patient), consent, keeping one patient from becoming two |
| 2 | Patient Assessment | XABCDE primary survey, head-to-toe exam, SAMPLE/OPQRST histories, serial vitals and trends, AVPU |
| 3 | Airway & Breathing | Recognizing obstruction, jaw thrust, recovery position, adult/child/infant choking response, CPR with rescue breaths, asthma and the patient's own inhaler |
| 4 | Bleeding, Wounds & Burns | Tourniquet first for life-threatening limb bleeding, direct pressure and wound packing for the rest, wound cleaning and dressing, impaled objects, burns (including chemical), infection watch |
| 5 | Shock | Reading early skin/pulse/mental-status signs, positioning, insulation, why the trend beats the snapshot |
| 6 | Musculoskeletal Injuries | Splinting with what you carry, CSM checks before and after, sprains vs fractures, slings and swathes |
| 7 | Head, Neck & Spine | Mechanism recognition, the spine questions, motion restriction, moving a patient as one unit, helmet decisions, head injury red flags |
| 8 | Heat Illness | Cramps → exhaustion → stroke recognition (altered mental status in the heat means heat stroke), cooling first, right where you are, hydration and hyponatremia judgment |
| 9 | Cold Injuries | The hypothermia wrap, gentle handling, shivering as a gauge, frostbite and the refreeze rule |
| 10 | Anaphylaxis & Allergies | Two-system recognition, assisting with an epinephrine auto-injector, second doses, why antihistamines don't replace epinephrine |
| 11 | Medical Emergencies | Altered mental status, seizures, diabetic emergencies and sugar, chest pain and aspirin, stroke recognition |
| 12 | Bites & Stings | Snakebite care and the folk remedies to skip, stingers, spiders, ticks, rabies risk judgment |
| 13 | Evacuation & Transport | Sorting evacuations into emergent, urgent, and non-urgent, packaging a patient for transport, improvised litters, calling for help, two-messenger rule and the written note, MIST reports, helicopter landing zones |
| 14 | Water & Lightning | Drowning recognition and response (breaths first), the water rescue hierarchy, cold-water immersion, getting off exposed terrain, lightning reverse triage |
| 15 | Kits & Trip Preparation | Building a kit that earns its weight, OTC medications and scope, trip planning, communication plans, pre-trip medical prep |
Gear required
To take the course
- A phone or computer. That's the list.
- No account, no payment, no downloads.
To practice the hands-on skills
- Nitrile gloves (a few pairs)
- A roller bandage or elastic wrap
- Gauze pads and a triangular bandage
- A foam pad, spare layer, or sleeping bag (splint + wrap practice)
- A trekking pole, stick, or foam splint to improvise with
- A willing, padded, complaining friend
What to carry in the field has its own page, the kit checklist, printable and organized by priority. The one-page assessment flow is on the field reference card.
Checking your knowledge
Every lesson has its own quiz, 158 questions across the course, and each answer comes with an explanation. When you've finished lessons 1–14, the final exam asks 40 questions drawn from all of them; pass it and you can print a record of completion with your name, score, and date. It's a record of work done. Wilderness First Aid isn't a regulated credential, and we don't pretend to issue one. Then test it all in the practice scenarios, sixteen interactive cases where the patient changes in real time and your mistakes play out without anyone getting hurt.