Wilderness and Expedition Medicine Society

Dundee WEMS is dedicated to furthering students' interests in wilderness medicine, combining clinical teaching in pre-hospital medicine and retrieval with learning wilderness survival skills.

Our student-focused practical-driven curriculum follows the pre-hospital DRS CA(c)BCDE assessment style with fortnightly sessions, covering topics such as managing a catastrophic major haemorrhage or C-spine injury not covered until late in the medical curriculum.

To supplement this, we have practical sessions outdoors such as our day hike up craggy Ben Vrackie and lochside camping trip in Blair Atholl. These included fire lighting (for warmth, marshmallows...), basic navigation and prehospital management of patients using material from our Sandpiper Trust bag. All work and no play makes medicine a boring place, and so, we inject fun elements into our teaching, tying in medical and navigation skills with our weekend trip.

Not only are our sessions relevant to the medical curriculum, but hands-on experience develops students' skills to potentially save lives of friends or strangers alike, such as in a RTA, expedition or walking in the Scottish mountains.

We also train and enter student teams for the national Wild Trials wilderness medicine competition. Whether you want to join an expedition, learn to splint a leg with hiking poles, start a fire without matches, navigate in a blizzard, or manage polytrauma up a mountain, WEMS has something to offer every medical student interested in the outdoors.

Contact us

Email: wems@dundee.ac.uk

Instagram: @dundeewems

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dundeewems/