PINCKNEY, Mich. — After hiking, canoeing and saving two victims, Dr. Seth Krupp and his colleagues were confronted by another wilderness emergency: A poisonous snake bite.
They rooted through their gear for something — anything — to compress the wound on Dr. Taher Vohra’s right calf.
Then Krupp and Dr. Joseph Miller quickly hauled their colleague from Detroit’s Henry Ford Hospital’s emergency department up a hill, hoping to gain some time before the next disaster cropped up.
More certainly would.
“You’re a child,” Krupp said to Vohra.
Added Miller: “My daughters weigh more than you.”
Despite the occasional rain and strain, the Henry Ford team was able to continue bantering less than three hours into the annual Midwest Medical Wilderness Adventure Race recently at Michigan’s Pinckney State Recreation Area near Ann Arbor.
Commonly called MedWAR, the eight-hour adventure race pitted 31 teams of emergency-medical residents, paramedics and medical students against each other in scenarios involving wilderness medicine and survival.
Contenders started by racing from a lake with canoe paddles, medicine and other permitted gear to another lake, where they had to handle a simulated water rescue.
After more canoeing, they found styrene-foam heads with ketchup in reservoirs representing patients suffering from allergic reactions to bee stings who needed opening of airways, medication and air rescue.
After paramedic Todd Metcalf assessed his team’s “patient,” Todd Audet supported the head, and Tim McCormick used a knife to open the airway.
The well-co-ordinated trio, all of whom are in the Ohio National Guard, said before the race they hoped their military experience and ease with a compass would give them an advantage against doctors.
“You can’t get too in-depth,” Metcalf said both of battlefield and wilderness medicine.
Contenders dealt with medical emergencies they hope never to find in the wilderness, including simulated mass injuries after an Ironman Triathlon competitor crashed into a crowd.
Eventually, they navigated around the state park in the dark to answer 72 medical questions in hopes of getting correct answers that would shave their physical race time before crossing the finish line.
MedWAR got its start a decade ago, when Mercy St. Vincent Medical Center’s Dr. Dave Ledrick was at the Medical College of Georgia. St. Vincent is in Toledo, Ohio.
Ledrick, colleague Dr. Mike Caudell and some of their medical students developed the concept of having an adventure race incorporating medical challenges as a research project.
The first MedWAR was held near Augusta, Ga., in April 2001, with 22 teams from eight states and three foreign countries.
Ledrick, co-founder of North American Educational Adventure Racing, brought MedWAR to the Midwest when he came to St. Vincent, with the first race held at Pinckney in October 2002. Now MedWAR is held in several locations.
This year’s Midwest MedWAR course and scenarios were designed by Dr. Mark Reddington and Dr. Alex Bobrov, both of whom are third-year emergency-medicine residents at St. Vincent. About 30 volunteers helped with the race, during which contenders had to use maps to find their way around the park and the next scenario. Peter Polewski, a University of Wisconsin medical student, said the race was a nice yet educational break.
Six teams came from the University of Wisconsin this year. “It’s almost more about the bonding experience,” Polewski said. “The learning will come along with it, I’m sure.”
Typically, teams with emergency-medicine residents fare best, said Ledrick, assistant residency director for emergency medicine at St. Vincent. Residents still are young and strong enough to move quickly through physical tasks, and they have the experience to attack medical scenarios and answer questions, he said.
Orienteering skills, meanwhile, play a big part in the last part of the race, when teams can reduce their times by correctly answering the multiple-choice questions, said Ledrick, who also is medical-student-clerkship director at St. Vincent.
“The teams that do well are not only the teams that are running all the time but the teams that are running in the right direction,” Ledrick said.
He added: “We want to reward brain power over brawn.”