Diver Training: How much is enough?

[BDSC]

Peter, what "rescue skills" are taught in OW? And if they are taught, then why is there a "Rescue Diver Cert"? Perhaps I confused you when I used the term "rescue skills". I was thinking that what is being taught in the Rescue Diver Class should be taught in the OW course. Is it?

 

[boulderjohn]

Peter, what "rescue skills" are taught in OW? And if they are taught, then why is there a "Rescue Diver Cert"? Perhaps I confused you when I used the term "rescue skills". I was thinking that what is being taught in the Rescue Diver Class should be taught in the OW course. Is it?

In OW, you are taught to assist a tired diver in a variety of ways. You are taught to provide air in an emergency.

In Rescue, you are taught to deal with a panicked diver at the surface (which just about never happens). You are taught to deal with different levels and kinds of panic. You are required to have first aid training, and you must be able to deliver oxygen to a distressed diver. You are taught to make a first aid kit and an emergency plan. You are taught how to make a rescue from shore in the most efficient manner. You are taught how to search for a lost diver under water. You are taught how to bring a lost and unconscious diver to the surface, turn that diver's body over, check for breathing, begin mouth to mouth resuscitation, and then remove both your equipment and the diver's equipment while continuously performing mouth to mouth resuscitation while directing the corpse toward shore or a boat.

Some people believe the rescue skills described above are essential for all divers; some people disagree.

 

[gcarter]

I have never liked the phrase that your OW cert is a "license to learn". I always thought you should learn what you need to know to safely be able to dive and then you get the license/cert. I generally find that when someone tells you it's a "license to learn", they are ready to sell you the next course.

I actually do like that phrase. I have always believed that to be true of ANY education or training. That phrase makes it abundently clear that you don't know it all. It does not, to me anyway, mean that you don't know what you need to dive safely. Just that you should not be consdering yourself an expert.

 

[MSDT476614]

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[Trace Malinowski]

Is recreational diving heading in the correct direction? Should the direction be changed?

As training agencies try to meet the wants of the prospective student, they often fail to meet the needs of the certified. That is the wrong direction. The correct direction would be to motivate the prospective student to want what the certified diver needs.

Currently, there are too many courses in my opinion. What's needed is a less is more approach that is less daunting and incredibly valuable. Off the top of my head:

1. Freediving + GUE Fundies or UTD Essentials should be the basis of Open Water diver training to 50 feet.

2. PSAI and SDI Advanced Open Water style courses in which important core specialties are taught in approximately 25 dives such as Rescue, Navigation, Deep Diving, Night/Limited Visibility Diving, Search & Recovery, Nitrox, Advanced Buoyancy Control, Intro to Tech and Solo/Self-Sufficient Diving should round out a recreational diver's education to 100 feet.

3. The bar for Divemaster and Instructor experience, skills and training needs to go way up.

4. Technical diving should just come in 5 classes: Twinset/Intro to Tech, Everything you need to know between 100 - 200 feet (air, advanced nitrox, hyperoxic and normoxic trimix), 200 - 300+ feet (hypoxic trimix), Advanced Shipwreck Penetration and Cave Diver (full cave only + stage, survey, DPV, cave rescue/recovery).

5. Drysuit, Ice Diver, Underwater Hunting and DPV should be the only "specialty" courses.

6. Rebreather training should be the responsibility of the manufacturers.

Time devoted to training needs to be adequate to meet the goals of training rather than the wants of the customer with an emphasis on team unification and standardization.

 

[waterpirate]

I think the biggest differance between now and then aside from the add nauseam classes is one simple point. Inclusion of everyone.

Then: Only people with mad in water skills and comfort in the water were considered as candidates for scuba.

Now: we train anybody regardless of their watermanship or comfort. the swim test is the most commonly glossed over in my observation, and I fault poor instructors, not poor standards or agencies.
Eric

 

[MSDT476614]

2. PSAI and SDI Advanced Open Water style courses in which important core specialties are taught in approximately 25 dives such as Rescue, Navigation, Deep Diving, Night/Limited Visibility Diving, Search & Recovery, Nitrox, Advanced Buoyancy Control, Intro to Tech and Solo/Self-Sufficient Diving should round out a recreational diver's education to 100 feet.

Dear TraceMarlin, not making fun or poking holes .. what would you estimate such a course would cost?

I remember when to learn diving one first had to buy just about everything - before classes started. Diving was considered the domain of the well off then. The old days - nothing good or bad but just the way dive business was done then.

 

[-hh]

I suppose that's what it come down to. It's a given that anyone who is first certified has a lot to learn and this will be gained eventually through future training and experience. At the start however, what skill-sets should "be mastered?" What knowledge and skills are minimal for the new diver? If a person is certified and is your Buddy, what level of competence is reasonable? Is this the level that you see at your dive-sites?
...
For many years, I never experienced diver incompetence to the extent that I see today. Something has changed. Some may disagree and quote accident statistics and take a position that the death rate hasn't increased....
...
Many of us have {seen} experienced divers who don't have a clue. If you were an Instructor, how many of the divers you see would you certify (that have already been)? ...

Good questions; as others have mentioned, I think that the incoming candidates have changed (slowly): where it used to be that most (if not all) students were 'water babies', contemporary customers are sometimes non-swimmers, afraid of the water, etc. When you then invest a fixed amount of training in each of them, they're all going to be raised, but that starting point still will be a factor. It is easy to say that so long as everyone passes OW-I that's all that matters, but what really has happened is that that earlier self-selection candidate is also more predisposed to then continue to learn & grow - - and we're left with a lump of what I'll call "barely graduated" OW-I's that even after five years of diving still haven't changed much. Because they're experienced, our expectation is that they should be much better, but since they're not, we label them as a 'bad' diver.

Have we dumbed Scuba down? No we've funned it up! Is the training inadequate? No, it's contradictory and confusing.
...
In the past, Scuba was taught with a "need to know" mentality. It was the way the shop/instructor exercised power over their students. Students had no idea that some of the skills were nothing but ego boosts for their instructors. They just did as they were told and hoped that some day, they too would understand and be allowed admission to the holy sanctum of being an instructor...

Skills which are nothing more than instructor ego boosts? I'll need to hear of some specific examples to be convinced. And please let's not suggest that a particular item which hasn't been very fully explained to the student in detail the how & why is what's being claimed here. The implication is that there's stuff which is nothing less than gratuitously done, presumably so that an instructor can go brag to his buddies or whatever.

With the advent of the Internet and ScubaBoard in particular, instructors don't get to control information like they used to. Instead of learning from a sage on the stage, the average student can assimilate all they need to know about the physiology and physics of diving in a fraction of the time with an online class...

Unfortunately, some of that 'information control' was because the educational standards for instructors aren't really all that great and they didn't necessarily have the requisite depth of knowledge to answer some questions. For example, the last time that I checked, still no Agency required even a High School Diploma for an Instructor, let alone something like even a single accredited Undergraduate level class in physics, physiology or education.

About the rescue skills...

The key one that keeps getting brought up again and again and again, is the one Peer mentioned--surfacing the unresponsive diver, or, as some others would call it, recovering the corpse.

I am wondering if anyone can show me a single time in the history of diving in which a diver has come across someone lying unconscious on the floor of the ocean or other similar body of water, brought that unresponsive diver to the surface, gone through all the procedures we teach in the Rescue Diver class, and had the unresponsive diver survive. I don't know of any myself...

I happen to know of two, in a manner of speaking. I phrase it this way because I didn't know the rescuers, but I knew the victim - - and yes, singular, since the victim actually did it twice. Both times, it was because he was freediving and had a shallow water blackout. And both times, the scuba customers onboard his diveboat found him and rescued him. Yes, I did say "customers": he was a certified dive instructor who was operating a diveboat and was supposed to be the "dry DM" on duty topside, but he went in for a swim.

Yes, this represents huge lapses in his judgement and his employer sent him packing shortly thereafter...but now let's ask ourselves one more question: do his actions merit having his Instructor's card pulled? And if we say yes, where specifically does this represent a violation under for example PADI's current QA Standards? Do keep in mind that all of the customers onboard the boat were already certified divers - no students.

I think the biggest differance between now and then aside from the add nauseam classes is one simple point. Inclusion of everyone.

Then: Only people with mad in water skills and comfort in the water were considered as candidates for scuba.

Now: we train anybody regardless of their watermanship or comfort. the swim test is the most commonly glossed over in my observation, and I fault poor instructors, not poor standards or agencies.
Eric

This observation is what I alluded to at the top of this post. These olden day "water baby" candidates had two advantages: good incoming skills in watermanship, plus the personality/interest to continue to learn & improve after the formal training ended. Today's incoming candidates simply aren't cut from same cloth, which may partially be due to factors such as a 'vacation activity' diving interest, but much of this can probably be attributed more to how diving is being marketed to such a broader audience...and there is indeed a marketing consideration: just look at how watersports which lead to scuba have been promoted to even the pre-pubescent children of current divers.

In any case, it technically requires more time/training to raise them to where the olden ones started, but this hasn't shown up (yet?) because of improvements in training productivity and equipment technologies which make diving easier.

What then transpires is that the population of 'experienced' divers (5+ years) who really haven't autonomously advanced much since OW, and these individuals are identified - somewhat correctly - as "Bad" divers. It is not because they're worse than a fresh OW, but because we expected better of them...because that's what used to happen back in the olden days.


-hh

 

[DCBC]

I think the biggest differance between now and then aside from the add nauseam classes is one simple point. Inclusion of everyone.

Then: Only people with mad in water skills and comfort in the water were considered as candidates for scuba.

Now: we train anybody regardless of their watermanship or comfort. the swim test is the most commonly glossed over in my observation, and I fault poor instructors, not poor standards or agencies.

Eric, I believe that the certification agency is mainly responsible. They set standards/minimum standards not the Instructor. Businesses often see increased profit in delivering as little as possible. They are in the 'business' of making money after-all. Instructors often try to do the most with what they have to work with, but this is often dictated by the LDS, which is aware of what is required by the Agency. The Agency sets the direction, the Instructors follow it.

As I mentioned previously, NAUI has currently lowered its standards in an effort to better compete with PADI. Considering many of the other agencies were around before PADI began, it always has surprised me that more people haven't tried to better understand how PADI become so successful. Enticing shops to come on-board, increase income and increase sales of diving equipment wasn't difficult to do. To do this, it simply lowered the certification standards. Instant success; the race to "certify" in less time, in the easiest way possible began.

If someone could get a recognized university degree in half the time, quality educational facilities like Harvard and others would eventually go out of business (or at best suffer severe financial hardship). Many people today want "it" for as little as possible (by way of time, physical effort and financial cost), especially if they perceive that they're getting the same thing (a certification card). They don't understand that a difference does actually exist. Do they care? No; it's good enough and they get what they want (but not necessarily in all cases what they require).

Diving never has fallen into the category of "certified operator," like a driver's license, pilot's license, or even a hunting license. There's no government control. In-fact, today there's still no reason for a person to be certified at all! Perhaps the largest reason why people take certification course is the "marketing of diving programs" and the "perceived danger" of not taking a training course. This of course is a matter of perspective.

Perhaps a new certification agency will eventually be formed that will hand out a certification card with a brochure outlining the dangers of AGE. After all if they want to know more, they can take another course...

---------- Post added December 18th, 2012 at 09:50 AM ----------

As training agencies try to meet the wants of the prospective student, they often fail to meet the needs of the certified. That is the wrong direction. The correct direction would be to motivate the prospective student to want what the certified diver needs.

...Time devoted to training needs to be adequate to meet the goals of training rather than the wants of the customer with an emphasis on team unification and standardization.

Trace, you and I are often in agreement. Diving competence however, has never been something that's 'required' (or even sought after by the majority). In-fact, no training of any kind is necessary to go diving.

I suppose I'm concerned about it because it's something that has been meaningful to me. As an Instructor, I attempt to pass along the knowledge and skill-sets that (in my mind at least) are important. I fully realize that this isn't a factor for most divers, but would have thought that diver certification agencies and Instructors would take this matter more seriously. It seems that diver competence has mattered less over the years.

---------- Post added December 18th, 2012 at 09:52 AM ----------

View attachment 142752

This ad was on top of the thread.

How does instant MSDT with 100 dives (training standards) sound?

Excessive?

 

[Trace Malinowski]

Dear TraceMarlin, not making fun or poking holes .. what would you estimate such a course would cost?

I remember when to learn diving one first had to buy just about everything - before classes started. Diving was considered the domain of the well off then. The old days - nothing good or bad but just the way dive business was done then.

Day 1:

Dive One: Trim, Buoyancy, Propulsion
Dive Two: Trim, Buoyancy, Propulsion and running a primary reel and guideline
Dive Three: Trim, Buoyancy, Propulsion and running reel with light signals at night

Day Two:

Dive Four: Trim, Buoyancy and Propulsion + Basic 5 + S-Drill & Valve Drill
Dive Five: Trim, Buoyancy and Propulsion + Basic 5 + S-Drill & Valve Drill + DSMB Deployment
Dive Six: Trim, Buoyancy and Propulsion + Basic 5 + S-Drill & Valve Drill + running line at night + light failures + DSMB

Day Three:

Dive Seven: Trim, Buoyancy and Propulsion + running line with OOG and reg/post failures + DSMB
Dive Eight: Trim, Buoyancy and Propulsion + running line with OOG and reg/post failures + DSMB deployment with OOG ascent
Dive Nine: Trim, Buoyancy and Propulsion + running line with OOG reg/post failures + DSMB deployment and OOG ascent at night

Day Four:

Dive Ten: Trim, Buoyancy and Propulsion + running line while navigating with compass + DSMB
Dive Eleven: Trim, Buoyancy and Propulsion + navigating with compass in blue water + DSMB
Dive Twelve: Trim, Buoyancy and Propulsion + navigating with compass in blue water at night + DSMB

Day Five:

Dive Thirteen: Trim, Buoyancy and Propulsion + navigating with compass + running line in limited visibility + DSMB
Dive Fourteen: Trim, Buoyancy and Propulsion + navigating with compass in blue water + failures + DSMB
Dive Fifteen: Trim, Buoyancy and Propulsion + running line and navigating with compass in limited vis at night with failures + swimming safety stop while navigating in blue water at night while OOG + DSMB

Day Six:

Dive Sixteen: Trim, Buoyancy and Propulsion + Search Pattern 1 + Lift Bag with light object
Dive Seventeen: Trim, Buoyancy and Propulsion + Search Pattern 2 with failures + Lift Bag with medium object
Dive Eighteen: Trim, Buoyancy and Propulsion + Search Pattern 3 with light & equipment failures at night + Lift Bag with heavy object in limited vis + swimming safety stop with lift bag at night using compass

Day Seven:

Dive Nineteen: Nitrox "Deep" Dive with Time-Controlled Descent, Basic 5, S-Drill, Valve Drill + DSMB with Time-Controlled Ascent
Dive Twenty: Nitrox "Deep" Dive with Time-Controlled Descent and Time-Controlled Ascent while performing Basic 5 S-Drills and Valve Drills on the move up & down through the water column
Dive Twenty-One: Nitrox "Deep" Dive at Night with failures and pretend overstay/over depth deco stop

Day 8:

"Dive" Twenty-two: Surface Rescues of active and passive victims
Dive Twenty-three: Submerged Rescue of Unconscious Diver & Toxing Diver
Dive Twenty-four: Solo Skills - tank valve breathing, runaway BCD, BCD lost buoyancy, lost fin, lost mask, breathing from BCD, clearing debris from regulator 2nd stage underwater, etc.
Dive Twenty-five: Fear-Frozen Diver and Panicked Diver on Long Hose during OOG at night

*****************************************

Something like this can be accomplished in about 8 days. As divers become more proficient, more complex skills may be interjected such as no mask OOG ascent. The faster the students are able to solidify basic skills the more room opens up for fun and experience dives. The above progression is assuming that the students need constant improvement of basic skills.

If we assume that divers are able to complete an open water course that involves 2 days of freediving training + 4 days of trim, buoyancy, propulsion, Basic 5, S-Drills and Valve Drills + DSMB deployment then an open water class would be 6 days and an advanced class could be completed in another 6 (If divers did 2 morning boat dives & 1 or 2 afternoon boat dives at a resort + night dives) to 8 days.

Total number of days needed for OW and AOW training to create diver proficiency = 12 to 14 days. Two weeks!

Cost? Generously cheap like so many shops keep education? $850.00? You can bill $70.83 per month. Sort of like karate lessons? With people's schedules being what they are today, training may take a few weeks, a season or a year, but that would bring students back to local dive shops again! Or, you could crunch the dives into a week at a resort. Yep, sort of like the old days when the brick and mortar stores could survive and even thrive.