Mike is the executive director of Wilderness Medical Associates. He is also an expedition medic and an urban paramedic who values critical thinking.

MCKECK’S in HALIBURTON . . . 6:00 p.m.

Ginger Chicken for Mike and Greek Salad for me.

THE CONVERSATION

Mike Webster is used to performing under pressure. He manages a wilderness medicine business, acts as an expedition medic on trips to places like Antarctica and still does shifts as an urban paramedic in Hamilton. Just this week he talks about encountering a medical situation unlike any he could have anticipated.  Naturally, he thought his way through it.

Mike says, “I’ve really been giving a lot of thought to why people do what they do. It’s for definition. Whether it’s family or professional or religious, it’s what defines us. It could be all of the above. We all have cylinders of what we do. Some are fuller than others. I think we all have a little in each cylinder.”

According to Mike, “It is a human need to be able to define who we are and what we do.  We don’t always create the definition. The experiences we have define us. I wouldn’t be satisfied if I hadn’t had the experiences to help me figure out how to define myself. Some people might know right from the get go. I wasn’t one of those people.”

As a teenager, Mike describes himself as “a bit of delinquent, nothing too crazy. I was a youth without direction so you get bored and you find your own fun. I certainly caused my parents some grief, but I came through that relatively unscathed.”

The first job Mike had was working in an outdoor program for court adjudicated youth. He enjoyed the work immensely and admits it was probably just what he needed. His love of the outdoors was certainly an important part of his life and after narrowly missing out on a job in Canada, he found himself in Arizona.

In Arizona, he was a part of a program that, as early intervention and crime prevention, referred young people to fulfill at least the first level of training for the local rescue team. The appeal he explains is that “It’s a bit of an adrenalin filling experience to go out and rescue people. “  Of course, the young people had to maintain their marks and complete the training to be deployed to rescues.

He adds, “These were obviously people who had been arrested in a small county. They’d move up the hierarchy and be deployed with police and would be better trained and have a higher skill level for rescues. They’d end up in an almost supervisory position over their arresting officers. ” This experience really influenced Mike to pursue wilderness medicine.

In some respects, wilderness medicine has been practiced for a long time, in others it is still developing.  Mike says, “It was originally designed for non-medical people like Outward Bound Instructors who were being taught urban first aid and seeing it wasn’t adequate. Now it is really on the verge of entering mainstream medical culture.”

Wilderness Medical Associates is owned by a physician. They now offer training for a number of Canadian medical schools and their program is so popular that there is often a waiting list. He explains, “These are medical students who want careers in rural or unconventional settings. We help them utilize skills that they can’t use in a traditional medical school setting.”

Some of the students from those programs, complete their residencies, become physicians and come back wanting to contribute to wilderness medicine.  Mike says, “You don’t necessarily have to go big to affect change. The ripple effect of what wilderness medicine has done in some circles is just amazing.”

Mike works as an educator, but is clearly a student of his passion for wilderness medicine. He is excited about a pilot project in Sachigo Lake, a fly in First Nations community in northern Ontario. He explains, “It is really to study the effects of wilderness medicine education in First Nations communities.  There’s never been this type of research done on what type of wilderness medicine education or training will be needed to support remote First Nations.”

The curriculum Wilderness Medical Associates has developed and their commitment to adapting it to settings from northern Ontario to rural Guyana to mainland China is something Mike is proud of. He says, “I feel that we’re doing something really unique. We’ve been very instrumental in making non-medical people into very good medical responders in unconventional settings. It’s the people that come first.”

Mike talks about the people of Guyana by way of example saying, “All of the folks in the course had basically scraped somebody off the roadside. It’s natural to feel like asking am I doing the right thing. They’d never been exposed to any training. It was life changing for them. It was life changing for me as an instructor.”

He explains, “These are different cultures, different learning environments. The way we teach them must be the way they learn. Our curriculum was designed for well educated North Americans.  That is not the majority of the world and now we are teaching the rest of the world so we must change our educational methods and especially our evaluation methods.”

This type of critical thinking is a part of the integrity Mike brings to his work. Wilderness Medical Associates has already moved from Hamilton to Halliburton to be consistent with its rural focus.  They are talking about whether the best way to move forward is as a profit or not for profit organization. They practice the critical thinking they teach.

Mike says wilderness medicine “is being able to know what’s good for you and what’s good for your patient. Even people who know a lot of medicine are not good critical thinkers in these environments. You can provide simulated experiences for people to become better critical thinkers. And you can debrief with them so that they know what they need to learn. You can’t just tell them.”

“If you start creating little grocery lists or checklists you have to follow, you’re going to get into a situation where it doesn’t work and you’re going to be screwed. You get the basic skills and assessments so it can be used along with that critical thinking. None of us are taught to think outside the box.”

As an educator and a wilderness medicine practitioner Mike is always thinking.  He is particularly excited about the general move towards more evidence based practices saying, “Medicine masquerades as a science. It is based on science, but we do medicine because we know it works. We don’t know why.”  The opportunity to develop that kind of understanding in wilderness medicine has Mike scouring medical journals and working with physicians to challenge the conventions that cannot be supported.

While Mike admits that everyone daydreams about a career change occasionally, he is still travelling to new places, gaining insights into education and enjoying the focus on research in wilderness medicine. He says, “I’m in a professional life that allows me to fulfill personal needs like having adventure. Yes I’m in management, but it’s flexible enough to let me go off and do urban paramedics and expeditions.  It’s kind of full on, but I enjoy it.”

He adds, “If I did start a family a lot of that lifestyle would have to change. It goes back to definition. I’d reformulate the definition. Kids would replace Antartica. We’re still at a point where we’re fulfilled by other external experiences.”

So in terms of his self definition, he says, “I would define myself as a wilderness medicine educator. Go deeper than that and I like the idea of entrepreneurship just in terms of the freedom. I really have a different definition of that now in terms of creative freedom.”

Should Mike ever box himself in, he could certainly think his way out again.

STILL DIGESTING

Mike and I talked about the fact that everyone daydreams about what it might be like to do someone else’s job. When I pointed out that there might be many people who like to imagine themselves in his life, he laughed that he hadn’t really thought about it.

We both know that most jobs involve more time in front of a laptop than people ever imagine in their daydreams. And I wonder if people force themselves further into their boxes by failing to acknowledge that even the most exciting jobs, be they practicing wilderness medicine on an expedition to Antarctica or blogging about extraordinary people, have aspects that can be just as mundane as any other job.

Mike, of course, is far from mundane; even though he laughs that his personal life is as dull as anyone’s. He reminds me that all situations require critical thinking and that we operate at our own peril if we rely too heavily on our prescribed grocery lists. Every situation is unique.

Mike is learning as much as anyone I know and arguably he has seen more than most. It takes more than a dreamer to actively engage in the world and evaluate all that you experience. And it takes a very critical thinker to see some blood and gore as a part of the whole, no matter how far they are from help.