Implementing Wilderness Medicine Training for Undergraduate Medical Students in the UK

The UK General Medical Councils' approved curricula share only 3 topics with the Fellowship in the Academy of Wilderness Medicine core curriculum, suggesting an underrepresentation of wilderness medicine (WM) in medical education. We developed a 5-mo course to address the gaps between these curricula to run in parallel with the conventional curriculum. Our 71-h course is composed of lectures and practical exercises. We set out to evaluate the effectiveness of this concept and assess its suitability for use by other institutions. The course was undertaken by 18 medicine and healthcare undergraduates. Semiquantitative evaluation of the course was done using participants' self-reported WM knowledge and interest before and after the course using a Likert scale. Participants were further assessed with a WM objective structured clinical examination. Before the course, students had a lower understanding of WM (2.8/5.0) and were not confident in prehospital medicine (2.5/5.0). After the course, knowledge and confidence increased in all teaching categories, with a mean gain of 1.4/5.0 (P<0.05). Students demonstrated competence in a range of WM categories by completing the WM objective structured clinical examination, with a pass rate of 82%. Providing students with a WM course is effective in introducing components of the Fellowship in the Academy of Wilderness Medicine curriculum and inspiring future engagement in the field. We have developed a framework for successful implementation of WM teaching and shown that the concept may be used in other undergraduate settings.