Interesting thread ... for those who believe that rescue skills should be taught at the OW level, how long do you think an OW class should be, and how much would you be willing to pay for it?
I happen to teach for an agency that mandates some level of rescue skill be taught at every level ... starting with OW. We train our divers in the basics ... air share while surfacing, tired diver tows, and surfacing an unconscious diver. We do not teach panicked diver intervention. Why? I believe it is because in the real world, the risks of creating a second victim would be too high for an entry-level diver who is still working to achieve a degree of mastery and comfort with their basic skills.
Some of y'all seem to be expecting people to come out of OW class as somehow perfect divers. Doesn't happen that way ... at least not in the environment I teach, where OW divers are wearing 7mm wetsuits or drysuits, hood, gloves and 25-30 lbs of lead. Just learning reasonable buoyancy control in a typical cold-water environment is a challenge, and adding the safe management of an unconscious diver ... who is passive ... is daunting enough at that level. Expecting someone who's just getting comfortable with buoyancy control to manage an actively panicking diver is pretty unrealistic.
When I took my YMCA OW course in 2001 it was a fairly comprehensive program ... four weeks classroom, 16 hours of pool, and five dives. We covered panicked diver skills as part of that class ... but the instructor made it clear that simulating the skill in the pool and OW scenario wasn't anything like what would happen in the real world, and that intervening with someone who was panicked could be very dangerous. It wasn't until I had to deal with a real-world panicked diver that I found out what he meant. By then I was an instructor with over 1,000 dives ... and it was still touch-and-go to manage the situation without injury to either the panicked diver or to myself. I think to expect a new diver to manage that same situation is unrealistic ... it's just asking for two victims rather than one. And the first rule of rescue is "don't turn yourself into a second victim".
Classes are an artificial environment. They don't really teach you skills ... repetition and experience does that. Classes simply provide you the tools you need to learn them. In this respect, there is only so much you are going to learn in an OW class ... regardless of how long or comprehensive the class may be. Sure, more dives will provide you more opportunity for skills and repetition ... but will it really be enough? And how many dives would you be willing to put into your own entry-level class ... 12? ... 20? ... anything less than that isn't really going to give you an adequate foundation for developing your own basic skills to the point that you can perform them with any reasonable expectation of proficiency in a real-world rescue situation ... and even that won't be adequate in anything less than benign conditions and fairly predictable responses from the person you are trying to rescue ... and don't kid yourself, panicked divers are anything but predictable.
Yes, it's good to have an introduction to the skills ... but not if all you really take from it is a false sense of security. In the real world, what are the odds that an entry-level diver is going to effect a rescue successfully? Now balance that against the odds that the same diver will only make the situation worse by putting themselves in harm's way.
I teach for an agency that mandates some rescue skills in OW ... and I'm happy that's the case ... but at that level it's far more important to teach the concept of "self-rescue" ... which is to say "think about how to prevent putting yourself in a situation where rescue skills are needed".
I encourage my students to get some dives in fairly benign conditions ... then take a rescue class. My agency doesn't put prerequisites on that class once you've completed OW because they recognize that rescue skills are important. But get in some dives first. Not only does it help free up some mental "bandwidth" for learning new skills, but it also helps provide a context to understand what I mean when I explain to them the importance of self-rescue, of developing the awareness to recognize a developing situation, and of timely intervention to prevent the accident from happening in the first place.
In the real world, most accidents don't just happen ... there are recognizable signs leading up to it that can be remedied before it ever reaches the point where a rescue is necessary. This is far more important to teach than the mechanics of rescue itself.
The best way to deal with a panicked diver? Recognize and fix the source of the problem before it leads to panic. That's the key to a good rescue. You simply cannot do that unless you have enough awareness to recognize a developing situation, and adequate knowledge and skill to deal with it before it gets to a crisis stage. To expect that level of awareness, knowledge and skill from an entry-level diver isn't realistic. It's like asking someone who just completed their first skiing lesson to go join the ski patrol.
Diving is a craft ... skills and knowledge are the tools of the craft. You can teach someone how to use the tools at any time ... but learning how to use them effectively takes practice.
... Bob (Grateful Diver)
