Wilderness and Survival Medicine Fellowship

The UT Health San Antonio Department of Emergency Medicine is honored to have the first wilderness medicine fellowship in Texas offering a wide variety of exposures and experiences to austere environments around the world.

The program is designed to have a consistent component of self-survival along with outdoor skill building to avoid becoming a liability but has an open-ended design customized to the fellow’s goals and future practicing environment. The opportunities will be both national and international practicing clinically and teaching. All curriculum is based on the comprehensive core curriculum published in Academic Emergency Medicine to provide a well-rounded and robust experience in austere medicine while maintaining roots in emergency medicine practice in our emergency department at University Hospital seeing 70,000 patients per year here in San Antonio, Texas.

As described in the expert opinion-based article Core Content for Wilderness Medicine Fellowship Training of Emergency Medicine Graduates linked above the core content will comply with all facets of the ideal curriculum along with additional opportunities to focus their training.

Program Highlights

• Length of Fellowship: 12 months
• Number of Sites: 1
• Number of Positions per year: 1

1. 12 month curriculum
2. 2+ weeks austere/wilderness medicine clinical experience
3. Geared towards fellow’s career goals
4. Local, domestic, and international training and experiences available
5. Significant teaching opportunities
   1. a. Grand rounds lectures
   2. b. Monthly WSM didactics & combined didactics with EMS/Disaster Medicine
   3. c. Month-long course training 4th year medical students in wilderness & survival medicine & AWLS instruction
   4. d. Teaching in Big Bend National Park
6. Goal of FAWM completion
7. Support in completion of high quality research

There will be adequate protected time to both practice in the emergency department and participate in the curriculum as a learner and teacher. Additionally, there will be a minimum 2 week austere medicine experience chosen between the fellowship director and the fellow that is directable based on the fellow’s goals in future practice. Opportunities for external teaching, travel and niche experiences will be available. A portion of learning will be asynchronous and may be obtained in the process of becoming a Fellow of the Academy of Wilderness Medicine (FAWM).

There will be an expectation of participation in online/offline medical control to a wilderness medicine system. Additionally, the fellow will complete at least one high quality research project for publication. There will be excellent resources including dedicated research staff and faculty to assist with this endeavor.

One month of the year will be a dedicated teaching month as an AWLS instructor and lead instructor for the Wilderness & Survival Medicine Elective provided by the DEM to 4th year students which takes place partially in Big Bend National Park annually.