PA Wild Med.com

Greetings!  My name is Eric Bowman and I welcome you to PaWildMed.com. I am an Emergency Medicine physician at York Hospital in York, PA. Within our Emergency Medicine Residency program, I was the previous Director of the Section of Wilderness Medicine. This website is designed for you to follow the activities that I am involved in and to assist you in finding resources related to Wilderness Medicine, especially events held locally or regionally.

On our Home Page you will see my personal mantra, “Find Adventure!” One of my personal missions is to inspire you to seek out new adventures. The field of Wilderness Medicine was created over 30 years ago, in 1983, when the idea for the Wilderness Medical Society was conceived. The founding members recognized a need to develop a specialty that would educate and foster research in locations where medicine was practiced in austere environments. Our goal is to provide you the education and the tools to be prepared for the unexpected when you seek out your next adventure.

I have had a number of great adventures where I have had the opportunity to practice my Wilderness Medicine skills. White Water Rafting the Grand Canyon on the Colorado River: this was a 17-day trip where there was no civilization for nearly three weeks. Your only communication to the outside world is a satellite phone with sketchy reception. Your only method of evacuation, if needed, would be by helicopter. One really becomes an expert on Water Disinfection on a trip such as this. I share numerous other skills and “lessons learned” from this trip within my academic presentations. Another favorite adventure was the Classic Inca Trail Trek to Machu Picchu. Learning how to acclimate to altitude and why it’s a bad idea to eat “Alpaca-on-a-stick” from a street vendor from a small village in Peru are lessons learned from this trip. (Not to mention why it’s a good idea to travel with Cipro and Immodium). Winter camping while Backcountry-Skiing Tuckerman’s Ravine on Mount Washington, NH helps to hone in Avalanche preparedness skills. Needless to say, I have had numerous great adventures that involve SCUBA diving (complete with marine envenomations); temperatures ranging from -30 F to 135 F; high altitude; extreme skiing; camping in the snow or the desert; encounters with rattlesnakes, bears, moose, wolverines, and one particularly grumpy mountain goat.  Other faculty (my friends) at our courses have many great adventures that include: thru-hiking the A.T. and P.C.T.; cross-country bike trip; Iron-Man competitors; Adventure Race competitors and Race coordinators; ER doc for 6 months at Murdo Station in Antarctica; Everest Base Camp; SCUBA to over 200 feet down; Medical Directors of Yellowstone, Denali, local SAR Teams. Many of our Faculty, including myself are Volunteers for the National Ski Patrol. Every class we teach and every topic covered in our courses are given by folks who have real world experience on their topics and bring true expertise to their teaching. To list all of the adventures my friends and I have had would take several more paragraphs.

The top of our Home Page will always have information on our biggest annual event: the Annual Wilderness Medicine & Survival Conference. It will either have the dates of our next Conference or will be a link to the Online Brochure (once we create the Itinerary). The You Tube video on the Home Page is a short snippet of what one of our conferences is about. The unique aspect of our Annual Conference is that it is held entirely outdoors (regardless of the weather) and we cook all of the meals (also entirely outdoors) for the entire weekend (over 1,000 meals served in 2 days). On the “Photos” tab you will see mostly pictures taken during our Annual Wilderness Medicine & Survival Skills Conferences.

On the “Events” tab, you will be able to follow me on my Wilderness Medicine Academic Travels. The events will be in chronological order, with the next event being at the top. Once the event is over, we will move it down to “Past Events” so you can see the types of activities we have been involved in. The past events will only include activities that occurred since the creation of this website in June 2015.

The “Contact” tab has a Google map that shows the location of our Annual Wilderness Medicine & Survival Skills Conference. If you are interested in attending one of our events feel free to use the email function on this page to communicate with me. Warning - I’m a great outdoorsman.  I’m only mediocre when it comes to technology, so feel free to be persistent if I fail to respond to your first email. Keep in mind, I might be on my next adventure and without connectivity to the electronic world (and that is always a good thing).

The “Links” tab is designed to assist you in finding your next opportunity in Wilderness Medicine. We will have web links to other Conferences or Learning opportunities that we recommend. We will also include links to online stores where you can purchase items we recommend for being prepared in both the medical and survival fields. All of us are Gear Addicts, so we will include links to our favorite outdoor gear and clothing stores.

I personally want to thank you for being part of our growing Wilderness Medicine community. I hope to see you at one of our events. And don’t forget….. “Find Adventure!”