Your version of a bad day
- S’mores night. Two minutes after the cookout starts there are hives; five minutes in, a wheeze. Knowing which camper carries epi and where it lives is a before-dinner habit, not a during-emergency search.
- The buddy check comes up one short. A swimmer comes out of the lake limp and not breathing. Drowning is the one place the order changes: breaths first, then everything else.
- The climbing wall. A camper puts a hand out at the bottom of the wall and the wrist goes wrong. Splint it, check the fingers before and after, and keep the rest of the line moving.
Start here
All 15 lessons are worth your time, but this order front-loads what your world serves up:
- Anaphylaxis — epi first and early — plus the known-allergies roster habit
- Water & Lightning — breaths first — drowning changes the order
- Heat Illness — color wars in July put kids on the heat spectrum
- Musculoskeletal Injuries — FOOSH wrists are a camp season constant
- Patient Assessment — kids under-report — the system catches what they won’t say
Then pressure-test it
Interactive scenarios — one decision at a time, tempting mistakes included, debrief at the end:
- Find the Epi — anaphylaxis at the cookout, clock running
- Cool First — the field-game day that goes over the line
- Wiggle, Feel, Warm — the climbing-wall wrist, start to finish
The certification question, honestly. “Wilderness First Aid” isn’t a regulated credential. No government body defines what a WFA card means — it means whatever the company that printed it says it means. What counts in front of a patient is whether you can do the work. This course teaches the work, free, and issues a record of completion — not a certificate, and we won’t pretend otherwise. ACA accreditation and state camp regulations set real training requirements — certified first aid, CPR, lifeguards on the waterfront — and those stand exactly as written. This is arrive-prepared material, not a substitute for any of it. If nobody requires you to hold a card, what you need are the skills, not the laminate.
What this is
Fifteen lessons, a 40-question knowledge check, sixteen practice scenarios, a printable field reference card, and a kit checklist. Free, no account, nothing recorded about you, source on GitHub. It teaches decision-making, not hands-on skill — practice the hands-on parts on a real, padded, complaining friend.