Note: Offered only in Block 13. $350-400 fee required (see description).
Elective Director/Contact: Douglas Diekema, MD, MPH
206-987-4346| diek@uw.edu
Description: This elective seeks to fill a gap by addressing topics not typically covered in other rotations, but important to the health of children. Elective content focuses on those injuries and illnesses that children might sustain in the course of participating in outdoor activities or while traveling to wilderness areas or foreign countries. In some cases, children may encounter these situations in their own backyard. Animal attacks and bites, insect stings, snake, spider or scorpion envenomations, toxic plant encounters, submersion injury, heat illness, frostbite, and hypothermia are all injuries that may occur in urban and suburban environments as well as the wilderness. Residents will become familiar with the risks that may be encountered while pursuing outdoor activities or overseas travel and become familiar with the principles of prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of these injuries and illnesses. Finally, this elective seeks to prepare the physician to care for these injuries and illnesses under the less than ideal field conditions encountered in the wilderness where creativity and improvisation may be required to assure a successful outcome for the patient. The elective includes a four day overnight field experience (three nights car camping) during which residents will have the opportunity to practice caring for injuries in less than ideal situations and review their performance on video-tape with the instructor. This experience does require a fee of $350-400 that each resident will pay directly to the field instructor.
Documents: On SharePoint