Hi! My name is Nerea McKnitt and I am currently a senior attending Ridgway Secondary School.
This summer (2020) I was supposed to go to a Pediatric Neurorecovery Center in Louisville, Kentucky. Due to COVID-19 my internship was unfortunately postponed. The Pinhead Institute still wanted to give the interns who got accepted a chance to learn something throughout the summer, so they gave us the option to take a Wilderness First Responder course up in Telluride, which made it easy for us to commute back and forth for five consecutive days.
Before the classes actually began, we had to read a book of around 200 pages and take several quizzes to fully understand what was waiting for us the following week. The first day we were greeted by three great instructors: Kevin Dunkak, Bob Rohrer, and Jeremy Womack. I couldn’t have asked for better instructors for this course. They were patient, funny and super experienced which made the overall course more entertaining.
So now you may be asking what is a Wilderness First Responder? Well a WFR (acronym for Wilderness First Responder) is an individual who has been trained to respond in emergency situations. The “Wilderness” can be classified as anything that is away from the hospital. With that being said the wilderness could easily be in a mall, on the streets or anywhere else.
As a lifeguard myself, it was awesome to learn more sets of skills that can help people in the pool. This course has taught us a lot: from knowing how to perform CPR; to wrapping a fracture; to stoppin bleeding…you name it!
We also did several activities in which we had to go around and act like “detectives” with the patients. The patients would show us their symptoms and vitals and we would have to figure out what was wrong with them. After knowing what was wrong, as a team we would work together to transport the patient, making sure they were safe at all costs. Following the exercise our instructors would tell us what went wrong and how we could improve.
Overall this course was a huge opportunity to expand my knowledge on health sciences. Since I want to be a pediatric nurse, its good to have some background on what to do in intense and urgent situations. I have met great people throughout the week as well, and it was a great experience that I will forever carry with me. Thanks Pinhead!!
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