To ensure their safety, medical professionals from around central North Dakota volunteer to watch over the skiers as ski patrol members. Azure and his wife, Tari, a secretary at Simle Middle School, don red jackets emblazoned with white first-aid crosses whenever they're on patrol. About 45 nurses, first responders, emergency medical technicians, paramedics, firefighters, doctors, and, yes, even one veterinarian, are part of the crew that responds to simple scrapes and cuts and the more-rare dislocated shoulder, sprained wrist or even broken femur. The crew encourages safe skiing, teaches skiers in need of instruction and patrols the slopes for signs of anything out of the ordinary. The situation is win-win.
Skiers get the assurance of quick-response medical care.
Ski patrol members get to ski free, get training in how to ski safely and get more experience with direct medical care, if they are from rural areas where hands-on care is rare. For ski patrol members who work hard every day at their regular careers, occasional injuries to care for are worth the medical experience, training with skis and time outdoors that they get. Patrol members go to the aid of skiers who have fallen, remove obstacles from the course and alert the resort if safety rules are being ignored. But first on the agenda is medicine. To be a member of the ski patrol, he said, every member is required to have medical training to at least the first responder level.