Dr. Greg Bledsoe

2023 Expedition Medicine National Conference Agenda Posted!

The agenda for the 2023 Expedition Medicine National Conference is now posted!

We are pleased to include a number of interesting and diverse topics covering wilderness medicine, tropical medicine, travel medicine, snake envenomations, medical evacuations, and more.

Please refer to the agenda below for the full list of topics and speakers for our upcoming conference!

Friday, April 21st, 2023

8:00-9:00 am  The Expedition Physician, Donner

9:00-10:00 am  Malaria, Townes

10:00-10:15am  Break

10:15-11:15 am  Backcountry Medical Kits, Donner

11:15-12:15 pm  Travel Vaccines, Freedman

12:15-1:30pm  Lunch

1:30-2:30 pm  North American Snake Envenomations, Bush

2:30-3:30 pm  Viral Diseases in Travelers, Freedman

3:30-4:30 pm  Geospatial Technology in Humanitarian & Disaster Response, Greenough

4:30-5:30 pm  Disaster on Everest, Kamler

 

Saturday, April 22nd, 2023

8:00-9:00 am Backcountry Water Disinfection & Purification, Donner

9:00-10:00 am  Schistosomiasis, Freedman

10:00-10:15am  Break

10:15-11:15 am  High-Altitude Medicine, Donner

11:15-12:15 pm  International Snake Envenomations, Bush

12:15-1:30pm  Lunch

1:30-2:30 pm  Cruise Ship Medical Evacuation, Callahan

2:30-3:30 pm  Fever in the Returned Traveler, Freedman

3:30-4:30 pm Spider Bites, Bush

4:30-5:30 pm Wilderness EMS, Hawkins

Dr. Howard Donner: How to Get Into Wilderness Medicine

A few years ago, Dr. Howard Donner, expedition physician and Co-Author of Field Guide to Wilderness Medicine, was gracious enough to sit down with us for an interview.

Dr. Donner explained how he got into wilderness medicine, and how others who ar einterested in wilderness medicine could get involved as a career.

We’re excited that Dr, Donner will be returning to our Expedition Medicine National Conference on April 21-22, 2023, and we hope this video helps encourage others to looking into expedition medicine and wilderness medicine as a potential career focus.

ExpedMed 2012 Expedition Medicine National Conference this Week!

Just a reminder to everyone that this week is the Expedition Medicine National Conference.

Classes begin Friday morning and end Sunday around lunch.

Give us a call if you're interested in attending.  We're going to have a lot of fun.

,

Charles Ickes

,

I just posted a new article over on the ghbledsoe.com website about a guy named Charles Ickes who is listed as a coauthor on some malaria research papers.

Ickes is interesting because he was an incarcerated prisoner at Stateville Penitentiary serving time for armed robbery at the time of the research publication.

If you are interested in Travel Medicine or Topical Medicine, the Ickes story is a fascinating historical tidbit from years gone by.

New Personal Blog: GHBledsoe.com

I just wanted to let you guys know that I'm developing a new personal blog called GHBledsoe.com .

I already write for Freelance MD, the Medical Fusion Conference blog, and this blog here on the ExpedMed website, so why another blog?

Well, in sum, there are a number of issues that I want to address and stories that I want to tell that don't really fit into the other genres covered by my current blogs.  Instead of "goobering up" my current blogs with posts that really don't fit, I'm starting GHBledsoe.com to have a place to store all these random thoughts and observations.

That's about it.  Thanks for following us on ExpedMed and hopefully I'll see you from time to time on the new site.  We appreciate your support.

,

Wilderness Medicine & Money Management

,

You can learn more about Dr. Mazumdar at Lotus Wealth Solutions and the Medical Fusion Conference .

, ,

Build a Career in Tropical Medicine: An Interview with Professor David Warrell

, ,

In 2008, I had the opportunity to sit down with one of my medical heroes, Professor David Warrell of Oxford.  Professor Warrell has had an incredible career in Tropical Medicine, having published over 400 research papers and lived in multiple countries over the courser of the past 40 years.  I pulled this interview from the ExpedMed archives because it is simply so good.  

In this interview, I ask Professor Warrell about his career and ask how someone could build a career in Tropical Medicine today.  Below the video is a brief summary of Professor Warrell's bio.

Professor David Warrell is now Emeritus Professor of Tropical Medicine and Honorary Fellow of St. Cross College at the University of Oxford, UK. After training at Oxford, St Thomas’s Hospital and the Royal Postgraduate Medical School, London, UK, he has lived and worked as a physician, teacher, researcher and expedition doctor in Ethiopia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Kenya, Tanzania, Thailand, Burma, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Papua New Guinea, Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia and Peru. He is senior editor of the Oxford Textbook of Medicine and Essential Malariology and the Oxford Handbook of Expedition and Wilderness Medicine and has published more than 400 research papers and textbook chapters on malaria, rabies, relapsing fevers and other infectious and tropical diseases, comparative respiratory physiology, respiratory diseases, herpetology, venomous animals, envenoming and plant and chemical poisoning. He is a consultant to the World Health Organization (on malaria, rabies, snake bites, antivenom production), British Army, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Medical Research Council, Royal Geographical Society, Zoological Society of London and Earth Watch International. He is a past President of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene and International Federation for Tropical Medicine and Honorary Fellow of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, Association of Physicians of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and Ceylon College of Physicians.

,

Wilderness Medicine Career: How to Get Into The Explorers Club

,
,

Wilderness Medicine Career: What Medical Societies Should You Join?

,
, ,

The ExpedMed Textbook

, ,

For those of you who are interested in learning more about Expedition Medicine or Wilderness Medicine, I'd like to mention our textbook, Expedition & Wilderness Medicine, that was recently published by Cambridge University Press.

This textbook is used as the syllabus for our Expedition Medicine National Conference and also as a teaching tool for many other courses and organizations around the globe.

The textbook is a hardcover text over 700 pages in length, with full-color photos and diagrams.  We recruited more than sixty experts from around the world who contributed content for this project.  Contributors include many notable individuals such as 

Richard Carmona, MD, MPH, FACS: 17th Surgeon General of the United States

Luanne Freer, MD, FACEP, FAWM: past president of the Wilderness Medical Society and founder and director of Everest ER

Ken Kamler, MD: Vice President of The Explorers Club and author of Doctor on Everest

Richard Williams, MD, FACS: Chief Health and Medical Officer for NASA

Peter Hackett, MD: Director, Institute of Altitude Medicine

We have been pleased to read many favorable reviews of our book in multiple journals including the New England Journal of Medicine and JAMA. Here's an excerpt from the JAMA review:

Expedition&Wilderness Medicine, edited by Bledsoe, Manyak, and Townes, is a comprehensive guide to the multitude of issues facing the expedition physician. The book is organized into 3 sections covering expedition planning, specific and unique environments, and specific wilderness illnesses and injuries. The comprehensive and often humorous chapters have been edited in a style that allows for easy reading, and they include numerous excellent illustrations.

Several of the chapters are written by some of the world’s authorities on the topic. Not only have many of the authors published widely on their areas of expertise, they have spent considerable time in the field. The authors have diverse experience ranging from serving as the expedition physician on a climb of an 8000-m peak in the Himalayas to providing medical care to a patient injured thousands of feet underground in a Mexican cave. This experience—and the willingness of many of the authors to illustrate ways to avoid future problems by describing their own misadventures in the field—contribute to the strength of this text.

Expedition & Wilderness Medicine is a must-read before any expedition. It carefully details what an expedition medical kit should contain, along with details on what to consider taking along for toxicological and dental emergencies. Although this book is aimed at the expedition and wilderness medicine physician, many of the chapters are superb summaries of core emergency medicine knowledge that are better distilled and presented than chapters in some more traditional textbooks of emergency medicine. We recommend this text to all who practice acute care medicine and all physicians who hike, climb, or vacation outside the city or who might encounter anyone else who does.

Jones ID, and CM Slovis. JAMA. 2009;302(4):442-44

We'll be writing more about opportunities in Wilderness Medicine and Expedition Medicine here on the ExpedMed blog, but for those of you who need something to begin your journey, pick up a copy of our textbook online or attend our Expedition Medicine National Conference and receive the book for free.

,

Lifestyle Design for Physicians

,

I wanted to say thanks to all the people who have come to our ExpedMed events over the past few years.  It's been a lot of fun and I've learned a lot from many of our participants.

At almost every event, I've heard from participants that they'd like to learn more about how to design a lifestyle that allows them significant time to participate in Wilderness Medicine activities.  This really shouldn't be a surprise.  Those who attend a Wilderness Medicine conference are likely to be interested in living a unique life (and vice versa).

In addition to running ExpedMed, I also write for FreelanceMD.com , a website for physicians looking to broaden their careers.  I thought it would be a good idea to link over to some of the prior articles I've written for Freelance MD regarding lifestyle design. I'm not 100% sure those in the Wilderness Medicine community will benefit from this, but I suppose it doesn't hurt.

Anyway, below are some of the articles I've written.  Hope this helps.

Physician, Build Your Own Ship

3 Thoughts on Physicians & Career Modification

First Things First: Handle Your Finances as a Physician

Physicians & Lifestyle Design

Plan Your Non-Clinical Career Escape as a Physician

Physician: What Are Your Assets?

Physicians & Evil Plans

Physician Career Diversity & Matt Dancing Around the World 

,

ExpedMed Interview with Dr. Eric Johnson

,

Former President of the Wilderness Medical Society, Dr. Eric Johnson, sat down with us at a recent ExpedMed meeting to discuss Wilderness Medicine.

,

ExpedMed TV Interview

,

Here's a television segment that discusses our first Expedition Medicine National Conference and interviews Dr. Greg Bledsoe.
,

Renting a Satellite Phone

,

If you're going to a remote place, you might want to consider renting a satellite phone.  These phones have come down significantly in price and can be rented very easily.  In this video, Dr. Greg Bledsoe demonstrates how convenient it is to rent a satellite phone and ship it back to the rental company.

,

Polar Bear In Churchill

,

Our ExpedMed crew went to Churchill, Manitoba this past October.  Here's a quick video of one of the polar bears that approached out Tundra Buggy one morning.  We'll be posting more information about this and other trips very soon.  Keep watching the ExpedMed blog for more information.

get your adventure