Costa Rica wilderness/survival medicine trip
Ratings
Review
I thoroughly enjoyed this trip and learnt much about what to consider when being a medic on an expedition. As the role of medic and expedition leader can be quite interchangeable - often trips will have one person doing both roles - a lot of our training focused on how to look after the group and things to consider when leading an expedition.
I also learnt a lot about my own body and how I cope with such a tough environment, this was a very important lesson as it will help me to consider my group members and what health problems they could potentially encounter.
The Spanish lessons around the fire in the evening were particularly enjoyable and, unlike learning a language at school, we learnt very useful phrases and vocabulary for our situation. It made me feel much more at home in this Spanish speaking country.
I was also told that as I am not currently a 4th year medical student (I start in September) I couldn't partake in the clinic placement. However, I found that a young 19 year old just about to start his second year of Uni (in a science degree that wasn't medicine) was able to do the clinic placement. This annoyed me as I have a 5 year masters degree in a science subject and have worked as a healthcare assistant in a hospital for 18months, I would have thought I'd be more useful than him.
I also think the document sent out before the trip suggesting what we will be doing could definitely be improved. It suggested that we would be doing a trek of around 3 hours depending on ability. Sadly there was no trek, other than the 45 minute walk into the jungle. It also made the medical section seem more medical, it suggested how we could use vegetation to help us, i.e. which plants were useful and which were harmful, apparently the bit of jungle we were in wasn't useful for that in terms of plants, so perhaps that bit should be removed from the document? It wasn't as medical as I expected and instead focused mainly on evacuation and getting people out, the leaders said there isn't much you can do in a jungle to save most medical emergencies, its more important just to get people out. In a similar way, the webinar before we left was pretty inaccurate. It suggested that we would be spending a week in the jungle then having a day off in the town (when the surf lesson or in some peoples' case - depending who they spoke to - a canopy tour), then another week in the jungle. What actually happened was a few days in a house at the start then 9 days in the jungle. This worked fine but it would have been nice if the information we were told before leaving matched up to what the trip entails.
Overall a great trip but improvements could definitely be made in communication.