Wilderness Medicine Podcast · Wilderness Medical Society

#40: Burn Care & Women’s Health Outdoors

·54 min·3 clips

Burn-center transfer thresholds include deep partial burns over 10% TBSA and full-thickness burns over 5% TBSA.

Butter is out. The opening leans on the old burn myth, then settles into the December 2025, 40th issue of the Wilderness Medicine podcast, recorded around a Tucson desert medicine conference organized by Drs. Brad Bennett, Tony Islas, and Nicola Baker, with the host speaking as well. The burn talk gets serious quickly. Dr. Cindy Bitter walks through the new burn clinical practice guidelines, and the conversation keeps returning to what can actually be done when the setting is a trail, a camp, or somewhere a lot less forgiving than a burn center. Blisters matter. Small blisters, clean equipment, enough potable water, and a sterile enough setup make debridement more reasonable, while big blisters over joints that are likely to rupture may be better handled in a cleaner environment. Pain control matters too. The show is direct about that, because scraping and draining burns is a rough business, and even the suggestion of aspirating blisters comes with the reminder that the evidence is still pretty weak. The jokes do not bury the point. There is talk of thromboxanes and evil humors in blister fluid, plus the reminder that debridement looks a lot easier in theory than it does when someone is trying not to flinch. Angela Martz joins the second half. The women's-health conversation centers on the article about whether female-specific health concerns are a barrier to participation on expeditions or adventure tourism, and Martz, an all-around mountain explorer physician assistant and faculty at the International Mountain Medicine Center at the University of Michigan, keeps the discussion practical. The tone stays blunt. The conversation says the topic can become a can of worms, but it still lands on the idea that women can absolutely still participate when they are prepared and ready to cope with the usual pileup of adversity. The field bias stays obvious. It keeps coming back to what can actually be done outdoors, from treating a burn in a clean enough setup to deciding whether a women's-health concern should change how someone approaches an expedition. The end is standard. The show closes with the usual CME reminder and the nudge to fill out the CME form and questionnaire for credit. It keeps its sense of humor. The listener who wants burn care and women's health discussed as real expedition problems, not abstractions, will get the most from it.

As heard by us

Burn myths are replaced with practical guidance, and the women's-health section remains tied to expeditions and adventure tourism.

The Wilderness Medicine Podcast uses its December 2025 issue to shift from the old butter-on-burns joke into burn clinical practice guidelines, then keeps the focus practical. Dr.

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Why you'd press play

You get burn guidelines, blister care, and a women's-health segment from a wilderness-medicine issue.

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