Fundies vs Rescue?

[Griffo]

Just a quick one, i'm planning my next holiday and am booking in a couple of courses.

I've got my GUE Fundies booked in for a few weeks from now, and reading the material, it seems to cover some rescue skills. Assuming I pass this, is there any value in doing a PADI or SSI Rescue class post this? Are an additional skills learnt? I'm sure there are people in here who have one or the other as well as Fundies.

I'm also curios as I need a resuce course cert for another course, and was wondering if it's worth arguing tha the Fundies covered those skills anyway.

Cheers

 

[elan]

PADI Rescue had much move coverage than the Fundamentals.

IMHO they are both worth taking

 

[Roko]

I'm not sure off-hand what the minimum requirement for rescue to be taught in Fundies is, but it will teach you the basics of pulling an unconcious diver out of the water (At least they did when I took it a few weeks back).

I've also done PADI Rescue, and found that course went much further in depth into rescue procedures, including raising an unconcious diver from the bottom, pulling them in and doing first aid (i.e. CPR), etc. I really enjoyed the PADI rescue course, and if you know you're going to get a good isntructor for it, I beleive it's 100% worth it to take on top of Fundies.

Fundies was 4 days of various skills with a bit of rescue thrown in, and my Rescue course was 2 dive days plus several nights of theory, dedicated to rescue only.

 

[BluewaterSail]

They are both worth taking. Fundies only has a very small section on rescue, as does any OW course.

 

[TSandM]

They are very different classes. Fundies does not include anywhere near as much information about emergency scenarios, how to avoid them and how to manage them, as Rescue does. Rescue will teach you to look around a dive site and evaluate what's there, how to make an emergency action plan, how to organize people at a site to deal with an emergency situation. . . none of that is in Fundies. Fundies will work you a great deal more on bringing up an unconscious diver, which is a good skill but only one skill regarding rescues.

They are both worth taking. It's my personal opinion that Rescue is the best PADI class there is.

 

[lv2dive]

Completely different focus in the two classes. Fundies will touch on some of the concepts and it has been my experience that students at least observe, if not participate in, an unconscious diver recovery, whereas the Rescue class is typically focused on the *rescuing* aspect.

Another way I look at it is, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure... but you never know when you might need that pound of cure, so you want it in your back pocket beside the ounce of prevention! Fundies being the prevention, Rescue being the cure... Mastering the skills in Fundies, and applying them in one's day-to-day diving, will, IMHO, help people to prevent problems in the first place, before they get to the point of people needing Rescue. Some of the skills are obvious and some less so (becoming more team-oriented, gas planning, standard gases, etc.) Anyway, barring unforeseen medical difficulties, there should be reduced need* for any non-medical "cures" (rescues) in the GUE world. But if there IS a need, a rescue class will likely focus that specific knowledge better.

All of the above is MHO only - YMMV! And do enjoy your classes!



*For example, first of all, due to gas planning, it's less likely one would run low/out of gas. Secondly, it would be a failure of the system if the buddy was too far away to donate her backup gas - and that donation falls under the umbrella of an inconvenience, not a problem from which someone needs to be "rescued").

 

[PfcAJ]

Take both, they're both good classes and you'll learn a lot.

 

[Griffo]

Thanks all! Very detailed responses as always.

I'll book in the PADI Rescue too.

Cheers!

 

[rlynch]

Agree with those suggestions. In Fundies the "rescue" senario is demo only and now not scored. Its not core to the fundimentals course.

Basically it is surface an unconcious diver from depth.

Rescue Stuff is covered in the Rec 2 and Tech 1 programs extensively.

 

[lamont]

yeah, +1 on taking PADI or NAUI Rescue.

there's also zero instruction on how to use a compass until you hit GUE Cave 2, so you might want to take night/nav as well. its a bit funny to watch badass gue divers who have no idea what that compass is there for.

find a good instructor, of course, since it makes all the difference in those agencies...