Wilderness Medicine Fellowship

The Fellowship in Wilderness Medicine is one of a small group of such fellowships in the U.S. Eligible applicants must have successfully completed an ACGME-accredited Emergency Medicine residency.

Baystate Medical Center is a prime location for wilderness medicine training. You will hone your emergency medicine skills in the busiest Level I trauma center/emergency department in Massachusetts with 115,000+ patients annually.

Local backcountry experiences await just outside your back door. Nestled in the eastern Berkshires, you are minutes away from rivers, lakes, mountains, and some of the best hiking and skiing on the east coast.

Up To The Challenge of Providing Medical Care in Remote And Austere Environments?

When help is miles, or days, away, you should know how to treat altitude illness, cold- and heat-related illness, trauma, wild animal attacks, and other illnesses and injuries sustained in the wild. As a fellow in our wilderness medicine program, you will learn and be prepared to administer care for a number of conditions and illnesses with limited supplies, often in extreme environments. 

You will gain experience in emergency wilderness medicine, including pre-hospital, disaster, and international medicine—all while traveling to exotic locations such as Guatemala, Greenland, Africa, Nepal, or other extreme locales. 

Diverse Wilderness Training Opportunities

Our wilderness medicine faculty and fellows learn outdoor skills and clinical wilderness medicine, and achieve personal growth through a variety of mountaineering and wilderness adventures in association with several organizations.

• Advanced Wilderness Life Support (AWLS)
• WildMed Adventures CME and Wilderness Education
• Swift Water Rescue
• Wilderness Survival Training
• Mt. Rainier mountaineering
• Pico de Orizaba mountaineering
• Aconcagua
• CRUDEM - Haiti
• Mt. Kilimanjaro
• SCUBA training
• AIARE Avalanche Training
• Himalayan Rescue Association
• Carstenz Pyramid
• Himalayan Experience: Expedition Physician - Makalu
• Adirondack State Park
• Wilderness Medicine Research
• Domestic and international conferences

Our curriculum provides details about goals, core content, required activities, and milestones.

Become A Leader In Wilderness Medicine

As a fellow, you'll be highly involved in teaching medical students, residents and EMS personnel, as well as local search and rescue teams. 

Through educational meetings, lectures, conferences, field work, travel, and clinical shifts in a busy Level-I Adult/Level-II Pediatric Trauma Center, you will graduate with the knowledge, skills, and leadership abilities required to manage emergency medical care in any environment.

We hope you consider our program during your application process. Please email me with any questions. Email Ben Church, Program Director.

Program-at-a-glance

The Wilderness Medicine fellowship at UMass Chan Medical School-Baystate was established in 2012. Our Wilderness Medicine program is one of only a handful of such fellowships. We are excellently located for a broad range of local outdoor excursions, and nearby airports make international travel convenient. We hope to recruit enthusiastic fellows whose interests are in providing excellent medical care while traveling and enjoying many of the most amazing places in the world. Please contact us with any further questions about our program.

As the region's tertiary care referral center, Baystate offers exposure to diverse pathology and the procedures and techniques associated with the world's most advanced medical centers. We invite you to experience everything Baystate has to offer.