Wilderness Medicine for Real World Emergencies
When help is hours or days away, the right training can save a life. Wilderness Medicine Courses prepare you to respond confidently to medical emergencies in remote and austere environments, where improvisation, sound judgment, and practical skills matter more than perfect conditions. Whether you’re an outdoor professional, trip leader, or backcountry traveler, our hands-on, scenario-based training equips you to assess patients, manage injuries and illnesses, and make critical evacuation decisions when traditional emergency services aren’t immediately available.
Our NOLS Courses
Our Partnership with NOLS
Wilderness First Aid
Duration: 2 days
Fast-paced, hands-on 2-day course covering essential wilderness medicine for outdoor enthusiasts and some professionals. Pre-approved for various organizations and suitable for WMI/NOLS recertification.
Wilderness First Responder Hybrid
Duration: 80 hours
Hybrid course with 3 weeks online learning plus 5 days in-person skills and scenario training. Learn to assess patients, provide emergency care, and make evacuation decisions in outdoor and austere environments.
Wilderness First Responder Recertification Hybrid
Duration: 2 Days
2-day scenario-based course to review wilderness medicine, evacuation, and decision-making. Includes online pre-work and recertifies WFR or Wilderness EMT (wilderness portion).
Wilderness Upgrade for Medical Professionals
Duration: 5 days
Intensive 5-day hands-on course to expand urban emergency skills for remote and wilderness settings. Practice improvisation, decision-making, and scenario-based medical care.
Our Partnership with NOLS
NOLS Wilderness Medicine works on a sponsorship model. They have sponsors throughout the country that they partner with to host courses and share their dynamic, world class curriculum, and expert instruction. Since 2005, Ready SF has sponsored over 500 NOLS Wilderness Medicine courses mainly in The San Francisco Bay Area, as well as Alaska, Montana and Bhutan. During those courses we have educated over 11,000 students. Ready SF is one of NOLS’ largest sponsors in the country. Ready SF partners with NOLS for many reasons. Our Founder, David Yacubian, has been a NOLS instructor since 2000 and has taught over 400 NOLS Wilderness Medicine courses on 3 different continents and all over the United States. We believe NOLS offers the best instruction, the most up to date curriculum, and continues to provide the best wilderness medicine education available. Don’t just take our word for it- here are some reasons NOLS offers:
We know you have a choice in your Wilderness Medicine classes. We hope you can find value in NOLS and what sets us apart from other providers. There are less expensive, older, and newer providers worldwide. But age, discounts, and savings do not always produce a quality product. NOLS focuses on excellence through its instructors, curriculum, and partnerships.
All NOLS courses are taught by NOLS Wilderness Medicine Staff, hired and trained by NOLS and under the direct supervision of NOLS Wilderness Medicine. NOLS does not allow other providers, organizations, outfitters, or companies to teach the NOLS Curriculum. NOLS instructors are expert educators with years of medical and wilderness leadership experience. They are, first and foremost, intentional educators. With backgrounds ranging from veterans of the U.S. Navy to National Park Service Rangers, outdoor educators, flight nurses, and more, they bring real and deep experiences to teaching the recognition, treatment, and prevention of wilderness emergencies.
NOLS teaches evidence-informed medicine that is field-tested on our own NOLS field courses with expert oversight. The wilderness medicine NOLS teaches is chosen carefully and is reviewed by their Medical Advisory Panel to be accurate, relevant, and practical. NOLS reviews accident data and the experience of outdoor programs and search and rescue operations to help prepare students to respond to the most likely incidents that happen in the wilderness. Additionally, NOLS performs internal retention studies to be most effective. NOLS is not only teaching relevant and current medicine, but medicine that you can remember and use. This medicine is not just the outlook or viewpoint of one person, organization, outfitter, or region.