Surf Medicine.
Field protocols for ocean trauma. For surfers, and for the clinicians who treat them.
The first hour.
Siargao Island. My first day here as a licensed doctor. Bags still by the door of my new place.
The knock came hard. A woman, breathless. Her father had wiped out on the reef. Sixty years old, drunk on the way out. Shoulder out of socket. Forehead split open.
I had nothing in the room. No suture kit. No saline. The nearest hospital was an hour by motorcycle on a road that didn't always run when it rained. And it was raining.
I reduced the shoulder with my hands. It went back in.
That was the day I understood the gap.
The road still wasn't dry the next morning. I walked down to the reef instead and thought about every surfer I had met that week. The surf breaks where the closest doc was hours away. The shore breaks where instructors had nothing in their bags. The travelers who flew in without knowing what was actually around them.
I was a physician. They were on their own.
Doc Surf is the work that came after.
Not opinion. Evidence.
Doc Surf is created and maintained by a licensed physician. Every protocol is sourced from peer-reviewed literature, Auerbach's Wilderness Medicine, ATLS, and recognized clinical guidelines. Every claim cited. Every recommendation reviewed before publication.
Content is medical education, not individualized medical advice. No physician-patient relationship is established by reading these pages. See the full disclaimer.