Program
Workshop - Essential Primary Care Skills for Wilderness Environments and Austere Settings - David Kuhns, MPS, CCPA, PA-C
November 12, 2022 from 1:30pm EDT to 5:20pm EDT
Description:
This interactive, hands-on case-based workshop will allow participants to learn to address common ailments and injuries that can occur in backcountry. We will use both evidence and experience-based approaches to a spectrum of problems, ranging from eye injuries, dehydration, hypothermia to sprains, fractures, and dislocations.
Learning Objectives:
At the conclusion of this session, the participant will be able to:
- Identify patients at risk for hypothermia
- Construct an effective "hypothermia treatment wrap"
- Perform reduction and stabilization of dislocations and angulated extemity fractures
- Using a variety of easily accessible equipment commonly found in a backpacking or paddling group, make a variety of immobilization devices for stabilization of typical backcountry orthopaedic injuries
- Address common ocular injuries, including corneal abrasions and foreign bodies
Speakers / Panelists
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Workshop - Essential Primary Care Skills for Wilderness Environments and Austere Settings - David Kuhns, MPS, CCPA, PA-C
November 12, 2022 from 1:30pm EDT to 5:20pm EDT
David Kuhns
MPH, CCPA, PA-C
David Kuhns
David H. Kuhns, PA-C Emeritus, CCPA- Retired, MPH, DFAAPA
David is an avid sea kayaker and recently retired his Maine Guide license. He has taught wilderness medicine for 20+ years.
With a career as a PA that has spanned 40+ years, David’s clinical experience includes pioneering roles as one of the first PAs in an inner city emergency department, and then as a solo primary care provider for an island community on the coast of Maine.
David completed his PA education at Saint Louis University in 1980, and later completed an MPH, concentrating on International Health, at Boston University in 2001.
David was the first PA to work with Médecins Sans Frontières, where he served in Somalia (1994-5), and then in Afghanistan (1995-6). He returned to Afghanistan in 2003 with Merlin, a UK -based medical relief charity.
He was honored as the recipient of the AAPA’s Paragon Award for International Humanitarian in 1999.
David joined the faculty at University of Birmingham (U.K.) as the Associate Programme Director for the PA program in 2008-11. While there, he consulted on PA development at several other British universities. He was also part of a team of experienced academics who consulted on the first PA program in Saudi Arabia. He was the Founding Director for the first Irish PA program at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (2015-6).
Though now retired, he continues to advocate for expanding the PA role in the international arena. He's currently advising on the introduction of PAs to Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. David and his wife, Patti, have an off the grid yurt on the South Shore of Nova Scotia for 20 years, where fortunately, he hasn’t had to practice his wilderness medical skills . . . so far.