Just how 'real' should a rescue scenario be?

[rjack321]

I vote for as realistic as possible. I have seen people freeze when their CPR patient vomits. Annie never pukes

 

[Cap335]

The best rescue class I ever taught had a real emergency
on the last bit of diving. There was a swimmer training for a marathon that had a mild heart attack about 25 yards from the picnic table we were debriefing at. The class jumped in brought him in put him on O2 and called EMS. Afterword they said they thought it was fake at first.

 

[TMHeimer]

The best rescue class I ever taught had a real emergency
on the last bit of diving. There was a swimmer training for a marathon that had a mild heart attack about 25 yards from the picnic table we were debriefing at. The class jumped in brought him in put him on O2 and called EMS. Afterword they said they thought it was fake at first.

Wow what are the chances. The only CPR I've ever seen was on TV, and I'm 65. My wife did it once on a drowning victim at a pool where she was lifeguarding--about age 16. She is 65 as well. That's 130 years and one case.

 

[rabe]

Interested in people's perspective following a situation and discussion with a couple of fellow instructors.

Some context. I've taught and team taught quite a few rescue courses over the years and like to push my students hard. However, last week I experienced the most realistic and frankly terrifying rescue scenario to the point that all the participants thought it was 100% real. No question!

OK, this was a commercial diver course, not a PADI rescue course. For two weeks the instructor had pushed us beyond our limits and thrown rescue after rescue at us. However we'd moved on to various other tasks including zero viz construction and survey. Throughout the course the instructor made it clear that if a real emergency occurred, he would take over.

Fast forward to the last dive of the day and I was tendering for one of the students on a construction task. This guy had been pretty quiet over the course and wasn't particularly talkative over the hard wire Comms system. At the dive time limit, the Supervisor gave the order to inform the diver to gather tools and prepare to leave the bottom. Comms received a mumbled affirmative and I prepared to take slack on the lifeline. I then noticed how few exhalations were reaching the surface and called it out to the Supervisor. He immediately straightened and pushed the Comms guy out of the way, demanding a verbal response from the diver.... nothing. I was taking slack and could make out the diver just below the surface, seemingly unresponsive. Immediately the instructor vaulted the railings and screamed at me to pull him in as fast as possible. We waded in and dragged him out, turning him over, striping his kit and ripping off his FFM. What I saw was a dead body! Deathly grey, froth at the mouth and nose, eyes rolled back to the whites. We lifted him clear of kit with his harness and whilst one of the guys opened his airway and pinched his nose, I lined up on his chest to give compressions. Then, the instructor shouted cut and pushed me off before I did some real damage. I was incredulous, right up to when the 'victim' winked at me, at which point I called him and the instructor every f***ing expletive I could muster. How he managed to look so convincingly real, I don't know. Even to the point the instructor actually thought something had gone wrong.

Although a deeply unpleasant experience, the positives were many. Firstly no-one, froze, puked or fainted. The instructor said this was surprisingly common. Secondly the time lapse from initial alarm to out, striped, O2 ready to go on, rescue breaths, CPR, emergency contact initiated, 40 seconds.

Anyway apologies for my rambling post, but the ensuing debrief was very interesting and bought up the subject of whether we should adopt this level of authenticity to recreational rescue or whether it would be just too much. The consensus amongst most was that this level of realism could possibly result in a real heart attack.

Interested in your views.

This is pure gold, thanks for sharing!

I think that a rescue scenarios (commercial or not) should be unexpected and closest to reality as much as possible.
The one you just told us thicks all of that.

 

[Scott]

I like mine as realistic as possible, so I will recruit former students to participate without the current students knowledge. They are informed that they are just here to dive for fun. I also have a minimum student requirement.
There are a couple locations where residences or other groups are present so we have to give them heads up. More than a couple times we've had EMS arrive. We don't call for pizza in our course!
We once had a drama teacher simulate a heart attack after a dive. If I hadn't of known before hand I would have sworn it was real.
Like Jim L, I'm the unconscious diver on the bottom and could be just about anywhere in an number of different configurations. We just finished one today were I slipped into a sidemount rig. Since I team teach with my wife we can pretend one of us is doing a "fun" dive.

Thanks for sharing your experience. When a scenario is well played they are fun for the instructor(s) but not so much for the students at first. Glad you guys responded as you were trained.

 

[Landau]

Even a little more realism can help. I used to teach first aid and always used a little makeup to simulate injuries.

A surprisingly large number of students would faint when walking into a room and finding a unconscious person lying awkwardly at the bottom of a ladder with a single drop of fake blood running down their forehead.

That said, PADI Rescue can be many students introduction to first aid / rescue. Start Easy

 

[ReefHound]

Do militaries train soldiers by conducting a training attack on a base that seems to be the real thing? Do police academies train officers by making them think they are in an actual shootout with armed robbers? Are pilots trained in an actual plane by simulating a hijacking or loss of engines? I can't think of anything other than scuba where training for emergencies is done by tricking the student into thinking it's an actual emergency.

 

[BoundForElsewhere]

I just finished my rec. rescue cert. My instructor put me through way more scenarios than what I'd seen on YouTube and studied on the PADI training.

You'll never know what you're prepared for until you are faced with it. This goes for diving and pretty much everything else in life.

While I was taught many things over the course of that week; calm, control, and confidence were the greatest lessons.

Go real or go home.

Oh, and you commercial guys kick ass.

 

[Graeme Fraser]

Thank you for your views and suggestions. I think the general consensus is that in the recreational arena a degree of realism and induced stress is beneficial, but maybe not quite to this extent.

Just a reminder that this was a commercial course, so we students were rightly being held to a higher standard. I would also like to say that the instructors and support staff were exceptional and the principals of safety were continually rammed home. Without doubt the best course I've ever done.

This happening at the end of the last dive was exactly to make us acutely aware that it isn't over till it's over. Starting to relax and dream of the first pint can wait until the van is loaded.

Our main take away was something that's discussed often on SB; when things go loud, they go go loud very quickly.

 

[Vitesse2l]

Graham, reads like you got a good course! I agree that until you get into a rescue situation, even well trained, you don't know how you'll cope. There's divers in my BSAC club who have done CPR on an non-club diver - his friends were reduced to total indecision.

There was apparently a rescue situation where a trained rescuer gave rescue breaths to the victim's forehead, because that's how she was trained (in the interests of hygiene).

I played the 'body' for my buddy doing her dive leader rescue training a couple of weeks ago and I was quite pleased that she made a proper mouth-to-nose seal otherwise I'd have swallowed quite a lot if water! It certainly gave me some insight being on the receiving end.