Commercial medicals for instructors.

[greg somers]

Gidday all,

Here's a sticky one for your opinions. I'd especially appreciate the U.K.slant on this one. There are moves here in N.Z. to make all practicing instructors take a commercial diving medical before they can teach over here.

In Australia they have to have one each year and in N.Z. it is every 2 years. I have noticed on the boards that some of you have medical conditions like asthma that would preclude you from teaching here under our systems. The system is based on the British system of which I am now led to believe has been dropped by their govt. as it was costly and unnecessary as recreational divers do not need to get into the commercial diving area.Here's the thing. No one in the local diving community wants the system here and our Dept. of Occupational Health and Safety have ignore all submissions by the industry and have instead listened to consultants (@#$%&$#!!) and people who would benefit from the extra $500.00 needed per each medical.

I have heard that in the U.S. an instructor only needs a basic dive medical every 5 years and they are more lenient with the conditions that they will approve for diving. Do any of you have experience under systems like this and did you find them workable or even practical? All opinions (intelligent ones) are welcome. Ready? Steady? Go! From the gasman.

 

[turnerjd]

gasman,

In the UK the HSE has (in the last three years) changed the diving at work regulations. Now, anyone who receives either money, or gifts in kind for diving services is classed as a comercial diver, and they have expressely said that this includes recreational instructors.

The HSE did a recent survey, that was reported in Diver magasine, where they saw that none of the recreational instructors were following the guidelines, which included full HSE medicals, and 3 man teams minimum. They said that prosecutions for not following the rules had not been done so far, but could be expected in the near future.

We are not dropping a system, we are actually making things far tougher.

BSAC used to mandate what was practically a full HSE medical with chest X-rays etc.., but now PADI is starting to take a major role in teaching, this requirement is obviously not uniform, and BSAC have dropped it (it is now a much more lenient examination).

As the new rules aren't currently being enforced people think it is getting more lenient. If they do enforce the system, which they say they will, then it will get much harder.

Personally, for instructors, I don't think that some-one who would have problems passing the medical SHOULD be instructing, and it is about time this was tightened up.

If PADI etc.. class these instructors as professionals, shouldn't the govt. treat them like all other professional divers, and require the professional level of fitness?

I don't know exchange rates, but a UK HSE diving medical is about £75. If you are instructing for a shop etc.. then surely they should pay this for you?

Jon T

PS HSE = Health and Safety Executive - administrative department of the Govt. responsible for ensuring adherence to, application of, and when necessary prosecuting for lack of attention to, all the Health and Safety legislation.

 

[Rick Murchison]

As an American, I am generally opposed to government involvement beyond guarding the coast and carrying the mail. And I am opposed to government involvement (beyond setting standards for high pressure tanks, which is a public safety matter, whereas Scuba itself is strictly voluntary) in Scuba diving entirely.
All the agencies in the States have minimum medical fitness requirements for divers at all levels. Whether they are adequate of not is a matter for possible debate, but agency (and insurance company) level is where the standards and their enforcement belong, not the government.
Rick

 

[DeepSeaDan]

What a crock.

In my 10 years of commercial diving I had my compulsory annual physical exam & it was no more intense than a checkup with your local family physician. The only aspect of the process I felt to be legitimate was the long-bone x-ray series required every 5 years.

I'm not suggesting that annual physical examination isn't necessary, all I'm saying is a checkup with a "diving medicine specialist" isn't necessary for a healthy, fit diver with no history of bends or other baratrauma. Government health insurance here in Ontario would have paid for a regular checkup, but no...not good enough, I have to go to a specialist whose fees are not covered.

I think it is ridiculous to demand commercial physicals of Scuba Instructors. Fight it for all your worth.

Regards,
D.S.D.

 

[turnerjd]

Originally posted by Rick Murchison
As an American, I am generally opposed to government involvement beyond guarding the coast and carrying the mail. And I am opposed to government involvement (beyond setting standards for high pressure tanks, which is a public safety matter, whereas Scuba itself is strictly voluntary) in Scuba diving entirely.
Rick

Crap.

All that the govt is doing is providing people with the right to an instructor that isn't going to die if they have to perform a rescue like KN did in one of the other threads.

If you can't pass an annual medical, you (imo) shouldn't have the right to put other peoples life in danger by being unable to perform as physically required in the case of an emergency.

There is always a balance between who has what rights, and in some cases a little bit of law is required to make sure that things happen safely. After all, safety far too often comes secondary to profit.

Jon T

 

[SubMariner]

But I disagree regarding seeing a hyperbaric (diving) physician over a general practitioner for a dive-related physical.

With all due respect to GPs, they simply don't have the background necessary to understand the physics and physiology of diving.

Example: as an aspiring Advanced Diver on a dive trip, I wound up with very bad barotraumas in both ears. The physician I saw after the incident basically just looked in my ears, gave me some prescription pain relievers, and told me I'd be just fine to fly home the next day. Needless to say I was in agony during the flight home. I saw my hyperbaric specialist as soon as I could, who told me that I could have ruptured my eardrums and done irreparable damage to my hearing because I had flown with this condition.

Just my $0.02's worth...

~SubMariner~

 

[Rick Murchison]

Well, turnerJD, I don't believe you could have missed my point any more completely. Read it again - the whole thing this time.
Rick

 

[DeepSeaDan]

Hello Submariner...

Perhaps you misunderstood me. I am not advocating the use of G.P.'s for the treatment of injured divers nor would I recommend a conventional Doctor for anyone requiring information or advice on diving medicine-related matters ( ie: a prospective scuba student with a potential contraindication to diving ). My point being that with respect to "fitness for diving" for a healthy individual with no pre-existing problems, the investigational concerns & procedures can be handled by any competent physician without the need for the diver to go to the hip & pay considerable dollars for the services of a "specialist".

To reiterate, it was my experience that save for long-bone examinations, the "commercial diving physicals" amounted to nothing more than a basic checkup. For this I had to pay several hundred dollars when Provincial health insurance would have covered the cost of a regular physician. You know as well as I that any time you deal with a "specialist" or a "consultant" there is an audible "Cha-Ching"!

D.S.D.

 

[greg somers]

Thanks for the repilies guys,
Especially Turnerjd.The U.K. slant is good to hear.The thought I have towards your reply is that if the standards are not being enforced by your country which probably has one of the greatest reputations for officialdom and bureaucracy then how are they going to be enforced in general.In most cases the 'higher-ups' expect the industry to enforce them and essentialy it is a recreational industry with a large volenteer ratio of people who just want to pass on the love of the sport.In my view one of the greatests dangers to personal freedom and common sense is the recruiting of the lovers of the sport to police a system that they themselves have very little imput to and do it for free.If your govt is anything like ours and ours is based on yours then they will nod their heads and pay general lipservice to those in the industry and then do what they want regardless.It would be interesting to hear from you as to how much imput the diving councils had in the implementation of regulations in your country.
Other issues not mentioned here are as follow.
1.The commercial diving medical is just that.For those who work in the diving industry doing commercial work.The commercial industry was running a long time before the recreational one was and no one really forsaw the rise of a leisure industry when the diving hard-hat was invented in the mid 1800's.The commercial industry generally operates at depths and times and in conditions that we wouldn't allow our students to dive in let alone do it ourselves.Aside from trimix and rebreathers which can't be used in my country without proof of training,we teach our people to stay "out of decompression".
Commercial divers have the bone xrays to check out damage caused by long term saturation decompression to their joints and are well trained in hyperbaric technology and have easy access to a chamber.We teach our people to avoid this as often the sites we dive don't have a chamber close by.In fact in Vanuatu they have a chamber but noone knows how to operate it properly as the operators contract ran out and they left the country.(just an example).
When we look at ourselves we are essentially recreational divers training others to be recreational and getting paid for it.That is commerce but not what was intended with the term "commercial diver".
2.When I learnt to dive in 1985 it was the U.S.Navy dive tables that we were taught with and these had a 5% dcs rate,
but the navy had chambers on board and their divers were extremely fit.Probably at levels most of us have never been at and hope to be.Even so the dive-life span of a diver or commercial diver is rated at 10yrs average before accumulated damage it too severe and it was because of these problems that the commercial medical was created to deal with.Even a full-time instructor cannot hope to reach these fitness levels as there are so many other aspects to the job like sales,theory time,travel and organisation etc..
The new table that we all use have a further redundancy of approx 15% used to help avoid rec divers getting Dcs'.for instance U.S.Navy tables = 60' for 60mins.Naui and SSI = 60' for 50Mins.
So can we seriously agree to be unpaid policemen in a system that takes money but doesn't return it back to the industry and that the industry has little input into?
Can we seriosly be considered as commercial divers even though our limits are recreational?
I think that there is alot of jealousy within different groups.It was the commercial industry that made the move in our country as they wanted more money and the only way to get into our pockets was to make the govt call all instructors as commercial divers.Before that happened they had their own system and we had ours and the govt.was tougher on them,as it should be.They in turn kept pointing the finger at the rec industry until some ponce in govt without a pea for a brain started to listen.
In my view,if the job realistically warrants changing then let' make the changes appropriate and not throw the baby out with the bathwater.Give me your thoughts from the gasman.

 

[turnerjd]

Originally posted by Rick Murchison
Well, turnerJD, I don't believe you could have missed my point any more completely. Read it again - the whole thing this time.
Rick

Rick,

My point was that profit comes before safety almost always, and that just sometimes a little bit of law is needed to point people in the right direction.

You think that lawyers / agencies are where standards and enforcement belong, I disagree.

PADI exists on certification numbers. By definition they will use the lowest possible acceptable safety standards, in order to get more instructors out there doing more certifications. Profit before safety? I think so.

just a different .02

Jon T