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@Diver0001 the course that I took was a full semester long so much more comprehensive just based on the time that we had. It was also co-taught by EMS instructors, and when I took it, the intent was for me to get into technical and professional diving.
The scenarios that I have been involved with where while I was in a teaching capacity, albeit with divers not under my supervision. Difference was that we had all of the equipment. Three of the scenarios I was in the water and happened to see it and helped get the guy to shore, one I was on land and just grabbed the stuff I needed and off we went. In the three up front, the skills I needed were taught in my OW course. How to get the guy to the surface, how to establish positive buoyancy of an unconscious or non-responsive diver, and how to tow him somewhere. They were reinforced in rescue, but not taught. The surface one was nothing diving specific that isn't taught in a normal BLS course.
I wouldn't deny the average diver of extra education, but I will say that you are unlikely to gain as much from it as you would in another course.
As I said, how to get a diver to the surface and surface tows NEEDS to be taught in basic OW, and is with my agency. It's a long path to rescue from OW for most divers, and you may have a situation on your first ever dive where you need to get them to the surface and to shore to get help. Why delay the basic training of how to get someone safely to the surface and shore?
Once on shore, there is nothing that the rescue course does for you because they all require CPR/First Aid/O2 admin prior to the course or to be taught concurrently. If you don't have the equipment for that, there really isn't anything you can do and unfortunately most people don't have it. I did specifically say you should take those courses and if you are diving remotely, you should have the equipment. If you are diving with operators, they're not going to let you manage the scene anyway since they have a responsibility to do it and you are probably coming out of the water, so just do as you are asked if you are asked to do anything. If you were in the water, they're going to have other people running around because you're probably exhausted from towing.
All that is left is the nonsense of giving rescue breaths in the water where you're going to drown the poor bugger at the surface, or take too long to get to shore where you're causing more problems than they already had, or finding someone that is lost but the odds of that are slim to none anyway and most of the "skills" taught for that are laughable anyway.
@KatieMac my opinion on watering down isn't from a course structure, elearning etc. It's from most instructors not actually knowing how to teach it in a realistic manner because they're either never done it, or are painting a very optimistic picture of how it will go. There are exceptions, sounds like Rob is one of them, but most of it is from inferior instruction vs. a watering down of the course itself. Most importantly, the course really can't be effectively taught in 2 days. There is WAY too much stuff to teach. Hell the OWT for our rescue course is 4 days long and each day is 12-14 hours. Courses like that can only really be taught thru universities though and are impractical for most.
Similar to @Diver0001 e-learning is only detrimental if it is replacing classroom time vs. enhancing it. E-learning is great because lectures suck. Even in college courses, you give online lectures, then assign homework, and use the classroom time to go over the homework to really hammer in true understanding. Unfortunately MOST shops are using e-learning to replace the classroom time and in a course like rescue that can be really bad.
Regarding sac rate, there is essentially a single formula that is used in pretty much all scuba math. In nitrox, it is ppO2=fO2*pressure ata to calculate your MOD. For gas consumption, it is depth air consumption=surface air consumption*pressure ATA. So you need three variables. Time, depth *in ATA*, and how much gas you consumed. Take the cubic ft or liters of gas you consumed and divide it by the time that you measured to get cfm/lpm which is your depth air consumption. Divide that number by the average depth during that period of time and that normalizes to surface air consumption.
The scenarios that I have been involved with where while I was in a teaching capacity, albeit with divers not under my supervision. Difference was that we had all of the equipment. Three of the scenarios I was in the water and happened to see it and helped get the guy to shore, one I was on land and just grabbed the stuff I needed and off we went. In the three up front, the skills I needed were taught in my OW course. How to get the guy to the surface, how to establish positive buoyancy of an unconscious or non-responsive diver, and how to tow him somewhere. They were reinforced in rescue, but not taught. The surface one was nothing diving specific that isn't taught in a normal BLS course.
I wouldn't deny the average diver of extra education, but I will say that you are unlikely to gain as much from it as you would in another course.
As I said, how to get a diver to the surface and surface tows NEEDS to be taught in basic OW, and is with my agency. It's a long path to rescue from OW for most divers, and you may have a situation on your first ever dive where you need to get them to the surface and to shore to get help. Why delay the basic training of how to get someone safely to the surface and shore?
Once on shore, there is nothing that the rescue course does for you because they all require CPR/First Aid/O2 admin prior to the course or to be taught concurrently. If you don't have the equipment for that, there really isn't anything you can do and unfortunately most people don't have it. I did specifically say you should take those courses and if you are diving remotely, you should have the equipment. If you are diving with operators, they're not going to let you manage the scene anyway since they have a responsibility to do it and you are probably coming out of the water, so just do as you are asked if you are asked to do anything. If you were in the water, they're going to have other people running around because you're probably exhausted from towing.
All that is left is the nonsense of giving rescue breaths in the water where you're going to drown the poor bugger at the surface, or take too long to get to shore where you're causing more problems than they already had, or finding someone that is lost but the odds of that are slim to none anyway and most of the "skills" taught for that are laughable anyway.
@KatieMac my opinion on watering down isn't from a course structure, elearning etc. It's from most instructors not actually knowing how to teach it in a realistic manner because they're either never done it, or are painting a very optimistic picture of how it will go. There are exceptions, sounds like Rob is one of them, but most of it is from inferior instruction vs. a watering down of the course itself. Most importantly, the course really can't be effectively taught in 2 days. There is WAY too much stuff to teach. Hell the OWT for our rescue course is 4 days long and each day is 12-14 hours. Courses like that can only really be taught thru universities though and are impractical for most.
Similar to @Diver0001 e-learning is only detrimental if it is replacing classroom time vs. enhancing it. E-learning is great because lectures suck. Even in college courses, you give online lectures, then assign homework, and use the classroom time to go over the homework to really hammer in true understanding. Unfortunately MOST shops are using e-learning to replace the classroom time and in a course like rescue that can be really bad.
Regarding sac rate, there is essentially a single formula that is used in pretty much all scuba math. In nitrox, it is ppO2=fO2*pressure ata to calculate your MOD. For gas consumption, it is depth air consumption=surface air consumption*pressure ATA. So you need three variables. Time, depth *in ATA*, and how much gas you consumed. Take the cubic ft or liters of gas you consumed and divide it by the time that you measured to get cfm/lpm which is your depth air consumption. Divide that number by the average depth during that period of time and that normalizes to surface air consumption.