Medicine in the field

Thwaites/Mt. Murphy field camp trip (credit: Chris Simmons)
Conditions:  Temperature 19°F (7° with windchill). Snowing.
Population = 1045 


Most NSF research in Antarctica occurs in the field camps that dot the continent.  These camps--which are often in remote, high altitude and windy locations--range in size from two people to dozens.

Either a Wilderness First Responder (a 'woofer") or a Wilderness Emergency Medical Responder (a "wemmer") works at each camp.  Woofers receive an intensive, 5-day course including basic life support and first-aid management of trauma/fractures, hypothermia, frostbite, and high altitude sickness as well as instruction on communication and transport from remote field sites.  Wemmers are certified EMTs with 50 hours of additional wilderness training.  For the purposes of this blog, I'm going to lump them both together as "woofers".

I meet with the woofer--and often the entire team--from each field camp before they head out.  At our meeting, I go through each of the 40 or so medications in the field kit, what they're used for, and how to use them.  If the woofer want to use a prescription medication--albuterol, ondansetron, prednisone, nifedipine, diamox, dexamethasone, nitroglycerine, lorazepam, oxycodone or one of the spectrum of antibiotics--they need to call me by satellite phone unless it's an absolute emergency (eg., anaphylaxis). Most of the medications provided, though, are OTC, and they can use them at will.  

A field kit.
The controlled substances pose a particularly prickly problem. Woofers are not licensed to prescribe and the field camps are not secure.  I don't know the breadth of DEA requirements, but our boss, Jim McKeith at UTMB does not want to lose his license over errant oxycodone. So the lorazepam and the oxycodone are locked in a small plastic box within a larger, locked field kit (an ammo box) and the woofer is told to keep the box as secure as possible within their camp.They then have to call us weekly to ensure that the locks are intact.  That's how I spend my Friday mornings--answering all those calls with the lock numbers.  Oh, joy!  Actually, it's a lot of fun.  I hear about what's happening in the camps and I can live the experience vicariously in my windowless, overheated, closet-converted office.

Some of the woofers have given me pictures when they return that I've posted below.  If you are curious about the spectrum of science being conducted, here's a link to the field science going on.  And here's a depressing Washington Post story about the melting of the Thwaites glacier. 


Automatic geophysical observatory #4.  These AGOs collect magnetospherical data (whatever that is)
year round using wind power (winter) and solar power (summer).  Every few years, they need to be dug out and
cleaned up.  This was the year for AGOs 4 and 5. (credit: Greg Runyan).  

The tiny AGO cabin where two of the three field team members slept.  The field manager was too tall for the bed
and didn't like the snoring so he slept in the red tent. (credit: Greg Runyan)

Equipment lef behind when moving on to next AGO.. It doesn't snow much here and this cache
will likely look completely unchanged when the next team comes back in future years (credit: Greg Runyan)



They don't call them the Dry Valleys for nothing.  A lot of research goes on in these desolate valleys near McMurdo.
They comprise the coldest, dryest and most continuously studied of the Long Term Ecological
Research Network sites (1800 scientists worldwide).  In the Dry Valleys, researchers conduct limnology, geochemistry,
meteorology, microbiology.....It's a huge and broadly interconnected project.
(Credit: Jennifer Lamp)

Commute to work in the Dry Valleys (credit: Jennifer Lamp)
Paleogeography work in the Dry Valleys.  Micro-seismographs that listen for cracks
in rocks allow scientists to better understand erosion (credit: Jennifer Lamp)

View of Cape Crozier field camp (other end of Ross Island) where biologists study
 Adelie penguin response to climate change (credit: Megan Elrod)

Cape Crozier penguin rookeries with thousands of Adelie penguins (each black dot)
(credit: Megan Elrod) 
Skua accompanying a helicopter leaving Cape Crozier field camp (credit: Megan Elrod)

Hiking roped together to prevent injury from falling in a crevasse (credit: Chris Simmons)
Drilling for sea water 300 meters below the ice of Thwaites Glacier
(credit: Chris Simmons)
The inside of a crevasse.  The shear areas within glaciers and ice sheets can create crevasses hundreds of meters deep.  Often
hidden by snow bridges, crevasses pose huge deadly threats to Antarctic terrestrial travelers.  Safe paths through the ice are
identified using ground penetrating radar. (credit: Chris Simmons)

Chris Simmons, field camp mountaineer and woofer, driving a snow machine while dragging along
 field equipment to better understand the water undercutting the surface glacial ice.  Mt. Murphy is in the background.
(Credit:  Chris Simmons)


Arctic oven tent used as dining hall for Mt. Murphy/Thwaites field camp (Credit: Chris Simmons)



Comments

Gabriela Gayer said…
The top picture is amazing, whoever the hero is, he/ she trusts or believes in the magic powers of the medical team.
February 4, 2020 at 8:19 AM
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