Adults, and focused teens with solid attention spans are welcome. Come with zero, OR plenty of prior first aid knowledge. You will hands-on learn how to actually care for someone on the front lines / first to respond, without the tools of an ambulance, hospital, or medical clinic available. Whether you are taking it for personal interest or work requirements, all are welcome!
Many people who take our classes are casual day hikers, or people who live in or sometimes drive or travel through rural areas and want to learn how to give help when professional help is far away. Others wish to be prepared to help out their loved ones wherever they are and no matter whatever might happen. Many are outdoor adventure enthusiasts or guides. Some are action/protest/rally participants; MEDIC is a safe space ally. Some are camp staff. Some are medical professionals coming to hands-on learn improvisational skills. Participant ages have ranged from 13 on up to 80s. Each class has a wonderful blend of ages and backgrounds from which we can all learn.
For CPR, WFA and WFR, there are no prerequisites. First-timers through medical professionals are welcome.
For AWFA Part II, to attend one must be currently certified in MEDIC SOLO dtWFA; or in SOLO AWFA, WFR, or WEMT.This course could be best named “Beyond the Golden Hour First Aid” -- that is, first aid anytime, anywhere it will be more than one hour from time of injury until hospital arrival. How the injury or illness happened -- be it a hiker tripping and tumble-falling, someone shot in an active shooter or other terrorist attack, a car crash in a rural or remote travel area, a farming accident, an injured person blockaded from leaving a protest or rally to seek professional medical care, a natural-disaster-inflicted injury where EMS is overwhelmed or not able to access the patient due to blocked or washed-out roads, or your friend isn’t injured but feels ill or isn’t acting normally and you want to sleuth out why, how to treat, and when to seek professional medical care … the list goes on with countless situations in which it will be up to you to improvise medical care for hours or days before arrival at a hospital.
Bleeds, blisters, sprains, strains, fractures, electrocution, heat illnesses, allergic reactions, asthma attacks with empty or no inhaler, cardiac problems, infection, shock, etc. could happen in any of any of the aforementioned situations and countless others, and this course prepares, empowers, and gives you the hands-on confidence to handle these and many other injuries and illnesses no matter how, when, or where they happened. Most people don’t know what “Beyond the Golden Hour First Aid” means, so we call our two-day course “Disaster + Travel + Wilderness First Aid" and issue to graduates the world-renowned SOLO Wilderness First Aid certification card, immediately upon course completion.
We offer open enrollment CPR classes the Friday night before most of our classes in Charlottesville VA, and during our Mountain-top Retreat dtWFA Course in VA over Labor Day Weekend. In Virginia and surrounding states, you can request a private CPR class to be added to a dtWFA course the day before or after, or anytime if you have a group of at least 10 participants.
We wish we had time to include CPR in all of our classes. However, our 2-day dtWFA course is 5 hours longer than most any other WFA out there, with deeper learning and more hands-on practice than the standard 16-hour class- one comes out much more confident and skilled in administering WFA correctly. No time, unfortunately, to build in CPR into the two already-packed days. The good news is that our WFA class costs $60 per person less than a course offered by another big national provider of WFA courses, and it’s pretty easy to find a CPR class at a local rescue squad, community college, American Heart Association or Red Cross office, etc.
Yes (internationally-renowned SOLO certification), with adequate skills performance and multiple-choice test score. Failing the written test almost never happens. If your skills are not developing as well as they should be, our instructor will do everything possible to give you one-on-one skills-coaching assistance and extra skill sessions as time permits, to get you to an adequate skills performance level -- so skills failure is rare.
Please see our How to Recertify web page.
Certainly! We offer gift cards if you would like to purchase it as a gift, or you can simply pay for someone else in the payment section of the registration form they're using, or here. In the latter case, please contact us to inform us for whom you just paid.
About a week prior to your course, we email all confirmed participants detailed instructions including a .pdf attachment, on what to bring, driving directions, optional carpooling and staying-at-another-participant’s-home opportunities (post-pandemic), and all other necessary information. If you need some of this information earlier, please contact us with exactly what you need to know sooner.
Sometimes yes for free! (1) With each course, we (post-pandemic) ask local participants if they’d be willing to host an out-of-towner; after registering we’re happy to put you in touch with anyone who made the offer. (2) The following locations only, might have free or small-fee camping, cabins, and/or dorms: IN: Indianapolis. NC: Triangle area east, Wilmington area. OH: Cincinnati area. VA: Nellysford, Richmond, Roanoke area, Thru-hiker town near Blacksburg. WV: Old Fields (AWFA Part II course) and Spruce Knob area (WFA and WFR courses).
Don’t worry! You can get a replacement card by submitting this form to SOLO headquarters, which controls the issuance of all replacement cards.
Online-Only Course:
Swap (your spot to a different participant, for in-person courses only, sorry not possible for online courses): simply provide us the name and contact information (email and cell) of the person taking your spot, and a $75 per person transfer fee payable here, all at least 72 hours prior to course start time. Please also have that person (not you doing it for them) register here importantly including: performing the steps which come *after* the payment section (they skip past payment but follow the subsequent steps).
Transfer (to another class), and Shared Notification Partnership: We welcome you to transfer your attendance to another MEDIC SOLO class, so long as you contact us to cancel at least 2.0 hours before class. The amount you paid is valid for 12.0 months after your original course dates. Once you let us know which class you’d like to transfer into, we will confirm your spot in that class subject to:
The most powerful learning experiences by far, are when there's bad weather during class time. Our instructors seize this opportunity to provide amazing learning experiences, in the type of weather when wilderness excursion incidents are more likely to happen -- better preparing those students who show up. If you choose to take advantage of this amazing learning opportunity, arrive early if you would like, and dress for the weather. If you prefer to transfer out to another class, we respect you; please see the transfers FAQ just above for your options. Please keep in mind that the media sometimes exaggerates and sensationalizes. We find the hourly forecast graphs by the National Weather Service to be most helpful. We've found this abundant resource challenging to use at first; here's what we've found to be most helpful: After entering the location, we scroll down and look on the right side where there's a graph just beneath where it says "Hourly Weather Forecast;" we click on that graph. Near the top of the graph web page, we select the "48-Hour Period" we'd like to view. We focus in on the brown line showing "Precipitation Potential (%)", and the bar graphs below showing how likely (not amounts) each kind of precipitation will be, and when. We find it most helpful that this resource provides at the base of the precipitation bars, a horizontal bar with information of how much accumulation will occur across the time period that that horizontal bar spans. So for example sometimes the snow bars look quite tall to us – that means it's likely to snow, but the accumulation horizontal bar at their base may show just 0.2 inches of snow across five hours. We hope this helps!