Taking the Rescue diver course may sound intimidating or maybe even scary after all dealing with emergencies are scary however being able to recognize stress and distress in yourself or another diver can change the way you dive
The PADI Rescue dive course prepares you with valuable skills to be a rescue diver, a better buddy and an overall better diver. Don’t let the name of the course or the fact that you’re preparing for an emergency intimidate you from doing this course. This is one of the most rewarding and fun courses you can take and provided you meet the minimum requirement I feel every diver should take the rescue diver course at least once.
What’s involved in PADI rescue Course
The rescue diver course is taught in 3 segments: knowledge development, rescue training exercises and open water rescue situations. The knowledge sections of the
the rescue diver course requires 8-12 hours of online or in-class study teaching you situational awareness, self-rescue skills and common rescue scenarios.
Each chapter will end with a chapter review self-assessment and your instructor will give you a final comprehensive exam.
Next, you move to the fun part, the confined water or pool portion to practice the rescue training exercises that you learned in your knowledge development portions.
Finally, you end with your open water segment of the Rescue diver course, here your first two dives will be you demonstrating the skills you learnt and practiced in the pool portions. Finally, there are the scenario dives, In these last two dives, your instructor will simulate a rescue situation for your group to execute the skills you learnt. The whole course is normally very fun and full of information because of the simulated scenarios the course takes a very fun tone. You will have both opportunities to be the rescuer which may be stressful, but then you get to be someone in need of rescue. At which point really you can do whatever you want to complicate the situation for your rescuer, which normally makes for a fun experience. Next, let’s dive into the prerequisites and look in more detail about who should take this course and what else you will learn.
Prerequisite
The rescue diver is a great course to take because of the value of the information. You will be able to avoid getting yourself into a situation where you need rescue and better yet you will have the skills to recognize a diver experiencing stress before a dive and how to help. Finally, you will know what to do when a diver is in distress. For one to be comfortable enough to recognize stress in a dive situation you should be somewhat familiar with diving and diving procedures, that is why the rescue diver course has some prerequisite training before qualifying to do the course.
The Prerequisite is:
- Be certified in Advanced Open Water
- Have a current First Aid/CPR Training (within 2 years)
- Minimum age of 15 years old
Who is this course for and why
The Rescue dive course information is presented in a repetitive format constantly building on the knowledge you have learned. The knowledge development portion starts with each chapter it will describe emergency/rescue scenarios that the skill about to be covered would apply. This is then further reinforced in a fun and pleasant scenario ending with the open water dives. The course presents stressful situations in an informative, enabling way that builds on the previous lesson; this leads a diver to become more and more confident with one’s skill to help and intervene in an emergency situation or perform a rescue if needed. Being a more confident diver because you have acquired new life-saving skills will add tremendously to your dive experience and I would say that is the main reason I personally would recommend anyone who gets their AOW ( Advanced Open Water) to start to consider doing their rescue diver certification.
What you will learn
The rescue diver course starts by characterizing how and what causes most emergencies, most emergencies are caused by human error and are avoidable. Behind being able to recognize stress and anxieties in yourself and others and being able to understand what is causing you the stress. If you are able to recognize what is causing you stress, you can start to come up with a plan on how to limit the stress hence possibly preventing an emergency situation. The course will go into great detail on how to recognize stress in fellow divers, and how to communicate with a said diver to try to find the source of the stress. Once the diver is aware of their stress you both can plan to mitigate what the situation may be to relieve the stress before any emergency situation may arise. The course goes into great detail in differentiating the differences form physical stress and psychological stress and how they are related in an emergency situation.
The course lists some of the physical stressors a diver may encounter.
- Cold and heat
- Nitrogen narcosis
- Illness or injury
- Discomfort or impaired function ill-fitted or malfunctions equipment
- Sickness
- Fatigue
- Alcohol or drugs
Psychological stress is normal because of divers perceptions or beliefs of perceived threats. A Divers psychological stresses may be imagined or real and are normally caused by physical stress which may be perceived or not.
Once you’re introduced to what are some of the causes of diver emergencies the course starts to expose the student to what is needed to be emergency ready. Firstly with what equipment is maybe needed. The course will go into detail on how to use rescue and life-saving equipment such as how to use ropes and buoys to rescue a diver in the water if you’re on a boat or on land. It will go over the pros and cons of administering oxygen, how to use a pocket mask or Ressivior mask and how and when to use a defibrillator.
Now that you have had an opportunity to learn about the different kinds of causes of an emergency that can lead to a diver needing rescue the course opens up the idea of emergency readiness and how it is made up of two components first is personal readiness. If you may be counted on to perform a rescue, you want to be aware of your physical abilities. You would hate to jump in the water only to find out you can”t swim 100 ft without exhausting yourself making a bad situation worse and instead of there being one diver needing rescue now there would be two. Because of this we should take an inventory of ourselves and think that if you couldn’t perform a safe toe of another diver maybe it’s time to set some fitness goals that will not only serve you to be healthier but maybe will be useful in saving a life.
The second component of emergency readiness is equipment readiness. Have your personal dive equipment in order and service in case you need to perform a rescue. Having emergency numbers and first aid kits all part of your personal dive equipment just helps you be ready. If you’re on a dive charter or at a resort knowing if oxygen is available and where it is along with the closest defibrillator, knowing local emergency radio channels are just some of the things covered.
The course will have many very useful strategies but the one that stuck with me the most is
Stop. Breath. Think Act.
This strategy is fundamental for handling any emergency not just in diving but maybe in life too.
Stop– just stop everything you’re doing
Breath– in diving this is our lifeline breathing will help you gain focus
Think– what is happening here, because you have stopped and are just breathing. You now have time to assess what is happening and how can you help. Maybe you’re not fit enough to jump in the water so you ask for help and look for something to reach a diver. It is always better to stop and think than to react because in the face of an emergency poor judgement will only make things worse.
Act- now that you have a grasp of the situation and a plan on how to effectively act with your best judgement.
These four words are the foundation of the 6 steps of emergency management the course will teach you. You will use these 6 steps in all the scenarios that are taught and simulated enabling you to be an effective rescue diver in minor emergencies as well as serious ones.
Now that you have learnt how to recognize different kinds of stress that can lead to emergencies and how one can prepare for emergencies and how to approach them. The course will start to introduce the myriad of emergencies that can arise. The second chapter covers many of the possible equipment failures, some major and other minor failures and how to handle them as well as going over several environmental risks such as wildlife. All dealings with responsive divers on the surface in these situations.
The final chapters of the knowledge components of the course will build on the 6 steps of emergency management and add an emergency action plan. This will be useful as the scenarios and situations you will be taught to manage will be more challenging. This is where you learn about how to rescue an unresponsive diver, assess an unresponsive diver, basic life support and how diving affects how it is administered. In water, CPR is a real thing and you will be exposed to the skill. Along with Procedures to follow if a diver is experiencing decompression sickness and the different levels of severity.
One of the scenarios and skills that a diver is taught, is how to search for missing divers. How to organize a search so that you also don’t get lost also but more importantly how to effectively not search the same spot twice. You will be shown how to use a reel and the different patterns you can search in using a reel to guide you for the most efficient search patterns for a rescue. This I feel would be a horrible position to be in and maybe one of the worse kinds of rescue because if you are searching the bottom for a diver normally in a real-world situation that may be an unresponsive diver.
How many dives are confined water dives?
Depending on how many divers you have in your class the pool or confined water portion of the course was a whole day in the pool about 8 hours. This part of the course was a lot of fun. This is where you start to practically apply some of the lessons and skills you were introduced to in the knowledge section of the course. Your instructor will lead the class normally having you simulate as many scenarios as possible.
Now to be clear what makes this course fun in spite of the seriousness and value of the subject is that, if you are the rescuer in any of the simulated situations you will feel some situational stress, and you may make some mistakes. This is very normal and part of the learning process. Being the victim in this course is where it gets to be the most fun, you get to break any dive rule you like, be as obnoxious and difficult to assist as you want to be for your rescuer, this is important because this is what will give you the confidence in the skills your learning because they WILL work regardless of how complaint the victim is and personally that’s what makes this course so valuable.
Open water dives
This course had four open water dives the way it was set up there were broken into two different types of rescue situations. In all situations, the instructor would tell the victim what scenario to reenact and the rescuer needs to use the skills that we practice in the knowledge and practice portions. The first two scenarios were responsive diver that is exhausted requiring a tow to shore, and the second situation was a panicked diver that has lost complete control and will try to climb you if you don’t use your new rescue skills. The next two scenarios were both recovery of unresponsive divers one from the surface and one found on the bottom after a short search. All these open water scenarios I feel were invaluable. Being in a realistic scenario with divers mimicking horrible situations will help reinforce your new skills which lead to confidence.
Importance of a good instructor
In all dive courses, it is very important to have a good instructor, the Rescue course in particular can be valuable to have an experienced instructor. You want to Learn your rescue course from an instructor that is busy teaching and diving with students on a regular basis, as opposed to an instructor that only dives occasionally half a dozen times a year because they are busy running a dive shop or dive instruction is only a side gig for them. The main reason is that an experienced dive instructor will have a wealth of real-world experience and knowledge that they can add to the course. They will be able to add information and experiences that will help imprint why rescue skills are important and better yet they will emphasize how unprepared and overconfident an undertrained diver can be further enforcing why practicing your skills is important.
Cost of course
The course cost $350 plus renting the four tanks for the open water portions. Fortunately, I had all my own equipment and didn’t need to buy anything new.
There is required equipment for this course they are listed as:
-Reel
-surface marker
-waterproof notebook or dive slate
-cutting tool
The PADI Rescue dive course teaches you valuable life-saving skills in a very fun yet maybe somewhat challenging environment, that will enable you to lead or at least be an effective part of a diver rescue situation. Hopefully, you will never need these skills but once you have them if you practice them routinely you can be confident that you will be able to help if the need arises.