PADI Rescue Diver or SSI Stress & Rescue Speciality?

[Tile Diver]

Where were you planning on taking the course? Also any reason why you don't want to take it near you, provided you live near water.

If it's on vacation, it might be better to take Rescue at home so you can fully and truly enjoy your dives as fun dives.

Not sure on location yet, more than likely Egypt or Malta having dived in these locations on several occasions, I've always been relatively happy with the level of instruction from both the PADI and SSI operators.

If the truth be known I don't currently dive in the UK, diving for me up until now has been a trip kinda activity, warm waters and good viz. I'm also in no way dissing UK diving as I'm sure it's got a lot to offer, just not sure I want to do it.

Diving isn't the sole activity I partake in and when I'm at home, I do various other sports / activities.

 

[bradlw]

I find this idea interesting...shopping the program/agency I mean.

I don't have recent SSI experience, and I have sero PADI experinece

my 2 cents worth:

1. I suspect that as many others have suggested, the instructor is the biggest variable. Someone that knows the stuff and is good at it...but it also has to be someone that you can connect with personality wise....
2. Next up is probably the shop's SOP. Could be a lot to do with their set-up. Their pool, the locations they choose for their checkout dives, how the coordinate and set-up the course, etc...
3. Next up is likely the certifying agency. Some probably have much better online "bookwork" than others.... but I still suspect that the standards and practices are pretty much the same.

Years ago when I was actively collecting cards, I always assumed that all the programs were pretty close to mirror images of each other....with the only real difference being the presentation.... the books would have different looks and feels, and might be organized a little bit differently. (yes, back then we supported the paper industry). I never really knew if my assumption was correct. I was SSI and my best dive buddy at the time was die-hard PADI and he and I would have discussions about it but I could never really understand any difference fundamentally.

I went through SSI, not by design, just by location. The dive shop near where I lived at the time when I decided to get certified was a one-man-band shop and he was teaching SSI. When I moved to a different city, the closest/biggest/seemingly most active shop happened to also be an SSI shop. There I did advanced OW and lots of other courses, all the way up to the now-defunct Divecon. That's also where I started with IANTD with nitrox. That was when nitrox was technical and none of the recreational agencies were doing it.

It was the same with IANTD. Later when I got into doing tech stuff, it seemed that with every move my choice was IANTD

Anyway, fast forward a couple of decades, and I was finally exposed and trained through another recreational agency, SDI. I did a refresher while my family did their OW certification. It was a very different experience from what I remember from SSI all those years ago. I doubt that' it's useful info though, because there was so much time between the experiences.

Regardless
Generally, I would say that the old paper books and the theory stuff they taught back in those days with SSI was far superior to the pared-down reader's digest version of today from SDI. That's an apples to oranges comparison though and I'd bet that the SSI stuff of today is more or less the same as SDI's stuff.

I think overall the face-to-face instruction in the pool and OW was much better recently with SDI than it was for my original OW cert, anyway. Maybe to a lessor degree it was better than teh SSI advanced stuff I did too, at that 2nd shop. My guess is that it was the instructor who made the difference.
but
How much of that is standards from the agency vs instructor? How much is instructor vs the shop's SOP?
In our case, the pool instructor was only fairly recently certified but she was good. Was that the agency's doing? The shop's doing? or her natural ability and hard work? Hard to know.

 

[DiveLikeAMuppet]

I suspect the main difference is that SSI allows instructors to add skills to the course and run skills in a different order, PADI tends to be very strict.

If you are in the UK, you could get the course done here if you pick the right instructor (DM for names ). It’s a good way to get exposed to poorer visibility and more variable diving configurations to get in a bit of stress - it builds up a lot of capacity as a diver.

You would typically combine Stress & rescue with a first aid course and oxygen administrator - that’s an important part of the course. Again useful to take it from someone who has been on an offshore expedition who has had things happen.

 

[pdwh]

I suspect the main difference is that SSI allows instructors to add skills to the course and run skills in a different order, PADI tends to be very strict.

If you are in the UK, you could get the course done here if you pick the right instructor (DM for names ). It’s a good way to get exposed to poorer visibility and more variable diving configurations to get in a bit of stress - it builds up a lot of capacity as a diver.

You would typically combine Stress & rescue with a first aid course and oxygen administrator - that’s an important part of the course. Again useful to take it from someone who has been on an offshore expedition who has had things happen.

Yeah, SSI allowing added skills, especially if you have a first responder teaching, is a really good point. I certainly benefited from that.

 

[Outbound]

I suspect the main difference is that SSI allows instructors to add skills to the course and run skills in a different order, PADI tends to be very strict.

If you are in the UK, you could get the course done here if you pick the right instructor (DM for names ). It’s a good way to get exposed to poorer visibility and more variable diving configurations to get in a bit of stress - it builds up a lot of capacity as a diver.

You would typically combine Stress & rescue with a first aid course and oxygen administrator - that’s an important part of the course. Again useful to take it from someone who has been on an offshore expedition who has had things happen.

Just to clarify a bit...

PADI does allow instructors to run skills out of order, as long as they are within the current "dive." That is, you can't take a skill from later in the course and put it in earlier or vice-versa, dive-flexible skills notwithstanding (although some of them have guidelines as well). But an instructor can re-order the skills within any particular dive to suit the needs of the course, the students, the location, conditions, etc.

As for those saying that it is the instructor and the shop that are more important that the certifying agency, I agree 100%. That said, it is often very difficult for students to accurately gauge an instructor they don't know. You walk into a shop and ask about taking a course (OWD, AOW, Rescue, what have you) and you often don't know which instructor you will get. Some might be quite good, others not as much, and many will be good at teaching some courses but not others. Online reviews can only get you so far, because often they are written mostly by OWD students who don't really know anything different. So if you can parse through some reviews to get to the ones written by more experienced divers, that can sometimes help.

I've seen some really piss-poor rescue classed being taught. Stuff like a VERY, um, flexible shall we say, 5-count when doing in-water rescue breaths, or doing rescue breaths by basically breathing into a victim's ear and not even trying to get over their face. A really good rescue class will put students through their paces, and it is physically and mentally demanding. A good instructor will make it feel like you are actually participating in a real-life rescue, and not just role-playing. He/she will get that adrenaline pumping.

 

[Tigerpaw]

Not sure on location yet, more than likely Egypt or Malta having dived in these locations on several occasions, I've always been relatively happy with the level of instruction from both the PADI and SSI operators.

If the truth be known I don't currently dive in the UK, diving for me up until now has been a trip kinda activity, warm waters and good viz. I'm also in no way dissing UK diving as I'm sure it's got a lot to offer, just not sure I want to do it.

Diving isn't the sole activity I partake in and when I'm at home, I do various other sports / activities.

OK, when searching for a shop and an instructor I would recommend that you use this board as a resource. So far just about everyone has given you good solid advice and from reading the comments you should notice that most of the replies have similar solutions/replies.

The reason I was asking about your location is that if you search the forums, there is a section where different regions of the world are listed. So for example when I had questions about Great Lakes diving I browsed the Central US forum, same for Norway, I read the Western Europe forum. Look for the region you're thinking about diving in and ask recommendations for a good Rescue Instructor. From there you should be able to get some good replies and then make a decision from there.

 

[DiveLikeAMuppet]

I've seen some really piss-poor rescue classed being taught. Stuff like a VERY, um, flexible shall we say, 5-count when doing in-water rescue breaths, or doing rescue breaths by basically breathing into a victim's ear and not even trying to get over their face. A really good rescue class will put students through their paces, and it is physically and mentally demanding. A good instructor will make it feel like you are actually participating in a real-life rescue, and not just role-playing. He/she will get that adrenaline pumping.

That was my rescue course at the height of COVID.

Which I think is perfectly fine - in real life, you would probably focus on getting the casualty out of the water and keep your reg in your mouth.

 

[Jim Lapenta]

The instructor makes the real difference. As well as them being honest about what the class is and what it is not.
A rescue class is not about getting you qualified to do things that would fall under Public Safety Diving.
1. You will not be qualified to conduct an actual search for a missing diver. You might get used as a surface spotter and to keep others out of the water or direct EMS to the site.
2. You will not be qualified to give effective in-water rescue breaths. Mostly because in an actual situation where some type of resuscitation is required, trying to do it in the water is only delaying getting the victim to proper care and possibly causing brain damage or worse. Unless this is practiced regularly, what is more likely is a closed airway or pushing the victim's head underwater. As well as for most efforts to be effective, you need to be able to do chest compressions. Not really possible in the water.
3. Getting control of an actual panicked diver is best done as a team. Not on your own. Trying to make contact without another support person is more likely to end up with an additional victim.
4. Where an excellent rescue course is effective is in preventing accidents before they happen. Long before anyone even gets wet.
a. Seeing equipment problems and fixing them or thumbing the dive.
b. Recognizing signs of distress, anxiety, medical issues, etc., and convincing the diver not to dive.
c. Recognizing a diver is not qualified for the dive or their buddy is an accident waiting to happen and notifying the captain or mate if on a boat, or staff if at an inland site.
d. Being able to take over compressions, rescue breathing or administering O2, and controlling bleeding.

There are thousands of people walking around with Rescue Diver cards who haven't practiced a single skill since their class claiming to be rescue divers. They aren't. Many are liabilities in an actual rescue situation.
Others are likely to look the other way. A small handful are possibly assets in an emergency.

Another thing a good class will spend time on is the after-effects of being involved in a rescue or witnessing one. Nightmares, anxiety, PTSD, statements to authorities, lawsuits, court appearances, distraught family members looking to blame someone, etc. As well as letting you know that a serious in-water accident/event is most likely going to be a recovery. Not a rescue.

 

[covediver]

Scuba training is essentially a commodity, lack of differentiation among products means decision is made on price. I agree that the instructor matters, but most instructors I met over the years are middlin competent. In most cases yoy wont know until you start.and your funds have been committed. If you arw thinking of going "pro" you might keep to the same agency for those certs.​

 

[Tile Diver]

Scuba training is essentially a commodity, lack of differentiation among products means decision is made on price. I agree that the instructor matters, but most instructors I met over the years are middlin competent. In most cases yoy wont know until you start.and your funds have been committed. If you arw thinking of going "pro" you might keep to the same agency for those certs.​

Yeah I agree price is a consideration, however I think both organisations, PADI and SSI are priced pretty similar. I'm leaning towards SSI for some reason.

With regards to instruction, thankfully I've never came across a bad instructor, I'm sure they're out there but in general I don't need to 'gel' with the instructor, I'm more interested in being confident in their ability to deliver what the course states and confidence that they've got the skills and experience to put it across in a competent manner.