OWD license without a doctor's certificate?
- Thread starter JudasFm
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purbeast
Contributor
You can't grab your inhaler at depth.I think that might be the worst advice I've seen in here
We are even trained that if we look the other way as someone changes their Medical Statement response to avoid getting an MD involved, we are TOTALLY in the wrong. If you're going to lie on the form for convenience, don't tell me about it and make me complicit.
Mike1967
Contributor
First of all, if it's for you, then why do you have to submit it to the dive shop (read the form carefully) and secondly: seriously? You have a medical condition that may kill you while diving, and you are so unaware of it you need that questionnaire to tell you? IMO that, if true, should automatically disqualify one as too dumb to dive.
Back in the USSR anyone doing any training in "proper" swimming pools would automatically have a basic medical cert: you had to have a fresh one every year, just to get into the pool.
Which I think is a totally reasonable requirement, but then again, you didn't pay for healthcare directly out of pocket... so the cert was just a matter of scheduling a visit to the doctor.
Mike1967
Contributor
caruso
Banned
I think that might be the worst advice I've seen in here
This in response to my earlier post "It would be unwise for a student diver to check any of those boxes unless they were willing to go through the trouble of obtaining a doctors clearance and risk possibly being denied and therefore being unable to dive."
To clarify- if a potential diver has a condition that may prohibit them from diving it would be unwise - even stupid- to simply ignore it, and not disclose it to a licensed medical professional, subsequently get certified, splash into the water, and die from an asthma attack or something else that could have been prevented had they disclosed the medical condition and taken whatever precautions were necessary, possibly but not necessarily including refraining from scuba diving.
What I DID say was that if a person has such a medical condition, to disclose it on a scuba diving application will mean that they have to go through a bunch of red tape, they'd have to see one or more doctors, and whether or not they are deemed suitable to dive will be at the discretion of those medical professionals who may or may not have a clue as to what they're doing.
Not all MDs are fully versed on diving and all that it entails and some will simply protect themselves from being sued by saying "NO DIVING" without fully understanding the implications, options, and methods to compensate for various medical conditions.
For example, I recently had a conversation with my 80+ year old Dad who last dived a few years ago. He's had a few stints since then, and he was interested in possibly returning to diving- say a shallow Florida Keys reef during pristine conditions with no currents and flat seas. His MD said "no way" and that was the end of it. Meanwhile I've read countless stories about divers doing just fine after stint implants. It's a matter of knowing your limits and the conditions under which you dive.
Yep. And submitting the signed and dated form with all the answers is for the dive shop's insurance lawyers.
(Even if somebody at PADI told some SB'er that you don't have to give the answers if you're also submitting the doctor's release, that's not what RSTC form actually says. And I'm fairly certain I know which interpretation the lawyers will use.)
caruso
Banned
Right. The medical form isn't for the student diver's safety at all. If the diver omits they have a heart condition and they subsequently have a fatal heart attack during a dive the dive shop is covered because the omission is the fault of the diver who left it out. Well theoretically. We've seen tons of lawsuits even though there have been signed liability releases and the plaintiffs still prevail in cases that defy logic and common sense.
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