About Paratus Institute

The mission of the Paratus Institute is to provide training and other resources which make it possible for people faced with extraordinary circumstances to lead others and to act with knowledge, skill and confidence. These circumstances may be proactive such as a wilderness expedition or reactive such as a post disaster response. We focus on knowledge, skill, planning, preparation, composure, problem solving and team building.

Paratus Institute was founded by David Frydenlund and Gary Bracken after years of team teaching Wilderness First Aid. They were dissatisfied with the fact that the materials available to them for certification courses were unrealistic, focused on mechanics, and failed to teach an underlying philosophy for incident management. Drawing on a broad spectrum of best practices from civilian and military emergency response agencies, they created a course which teaches first principles and which uses a systematic approach to diagnosis, stabilization and treatment of problems in the field. Best practices and systematic problem solving became the cornerstone of all the offerings of Paratus Institute.