The Philosophy of Diver Training

[DCBC]

So, absent any standards, the instructor's decision is a best guess that can be trumped by the prosecution's expert witness?

This is what I was trying to describe earlier, however the concept of "minimum standards" seems to elude some people. It can be summed-up like this:

1. Each diving location in the world may present the student/new diver with different hazards which may require a different knowledge base and skill-sets than another geographic location. What is reasonably required to be taught (and examined) will be dependent upon the local conditions where the diver is being trained.

2. All diver certification agencies specify a Standard that is required for certification.
Some certification agencies base their Standards on ideal conditions. The level of Student difficulty and course content of what is required by the agency varies from one agency to another.

3. Different certification agencies look at the Standards in a different way. One may require a student to successfully complete a "universal program" as the only criteria for certification. Others look at their Standards as only "minimum standards" and encourage their instructors to teach beyond the agency requirements. In no case should a diver be certified until s/he is adequately prepared for these conditions and the instructor has tested/evaluated the Client. In any case, the instructor (or LDS) presumably enters into a contract to prepare the Client to dive in the area specified. Payment is accepted and the diver is eventually certified to dive safely in the conditions specified.

4. If the instructor was found negligent, it would be determined in a criminal or civil court of law. In civil law (which may vary from jurisdiction) negligence usually is found when the instructor does not meet "the standard of care." This may be defined by what was "reasonable under the circumstances." As liability may be assessed by an act or omission (what the instructor did, or failed to do), Expert Witnesses would be usually called by both the Defense and Prosecution. The decision rests with the Bench.

5. If the Standards were felt to be insufficient, it would reasonably be held that the instructor should have either enhanced the training given (to prepare the Client for the conditions reasonably expected in the local area), or give a referral for the Client to be certified in more ideal conditions. Again the decision is dependent on the strength of argument and case law (as applicable) from both sides.

If the instructor involved can only provide a "best guess," I certainly wouldn't certify him as an Instructor to begin with. S/he should know what training is reasonable for a diver to be able to dive safely and train him accordingly. The instructor should actively teach/test and evaluate the Student and keep a written record.

 

[Diver0001]

This is what I was trying to describe earlier, however the concept of "minimum standards" seems to elude some people. It can be summed-up like this:

1. Each diving location in the world may present the student/new diver with different hazards which may require a different knowledge base and skill-sets than another geographic location. What is reasonably required to be taught (and examined) will be dependent upon the local conditions where the diver is being trained.

Correct. In the PADI standards this concept is addressed generally (meaning it applies to all PADI courses).

In the standards it's expressed like this:

Conduct risk assessments for your student divers by evaluating diver,
environmental, equipment, physical and psychological variables (as
described in PADI’s Guide to Teaching) during PADI courses and
programs. Always err on the side of caution and conservatism when
making decisions and applying judgment in your PADI programs

The key word in all of that which applies to what DCBC is saying is "environmental" which is essentally the "local environment". What PADI is saying here is that you have to account for the local environment when you teach any PADI programme.

I know DCBC wants people to believe that they don't do that but here it is in black and white.

All PADI instructors who use the modern materials are taught one essential thing, which is that the "general" standards AND the "specific" standards for each course BOTH need to be applied to the programme. What happens in many of these discussions is that people have some sense of the specific standards but neglect to account for the general standards. As an ex PADI instructor, we should expect DCBC to know this but he neglects to account for it in his thinking/posting and comes again and again with a 1/2 truth about standards.

R..

 

[DCBC]

If the instructor makes his or he own decisions that are outside the standards of the agency, then the instructor can count on the opposition using those standards to question his or her judgment. It will then be up to the instructor to find expert witnesses that will agree that those decisions were acceptable, despite the fact that that there are no standards that support them.

After that, a jury of non-divers will decide the instructor's fate.

I don't know how your jurisdiction does things but in Canada the only possible non-diver that would decide the instructors fate, is the Judge hearing the case. If the instructor teaches for Agency X, it's likely that there may be an Expert Witness from that Agency. What side that Witness is on is yet to be determined.

John, it comes down to what's reasonable. If the local conditions involved high tides, the diver trained died as a direct result and the instructor didn't teach tide tables because it wasn't required in the Standards, would the Agency say that the Instructor was right, or that the diver wasn't trained for local conditions? It's impossible to say. What will the Judge see as "reasonable" in the cold light of the court?

I think that might be why a lot of of instructors prefer to instruct within their agency's standards.

All agencies other than PADI that I'm aware, encourage instructors to teach past the Standards for this reason. I believe that many Standards are set with vacation land in-mind. That's why Agency Standards are called "minimum standards" in other agencies.

 

[hg frogman]

Come on, you all !

First, the weak link for QA is the dive operation, not the instructor. It's the dive op that settles the prices of the courses, the durations, etc, and ultimately the quality. The instructor is only a worker in most cases and does what he or she can (or just doesn't care after having been honestly trying for a while). Don't enforce the already existing practice of considering the instructor as the "circuit-breaker" in the chain !

Second, if only the agencies made sure that an instructor has 4 students maximum, that the entry-level course is done in 5 days minimum, and that it is conducted with 5 real confined water dives and 4 real open water dives (instead of one half-day in the pool and 4 open water dives lasting 20' with one hour interval) there would already be a BIG improvement in the level of the newly certified divers from many areas.

And finally customers get what they pay for - maybe if they give 1000 bucks for a GUE (or whatever, nothing personal) course they'll really have top quality, but at this price I can guarantee them a top notch PADI Open Water course as well.

In my opinion you don't address the real problems.

 

[DCBC]

We've covered this already. You confuse "test" with "train". What you want people to believe is that PADI instructors are unable in any way to deep-out the material. That's false.

test
noun

A way of discovering, by questions or practical activities, what someone knows, or what someone or something can do.

What formal documentary evidence do you keep that will affirm that you have "tested" the Student? Do you do this for any "enhancements" to the training standards that you make? How about other things that you add (tide tables for example)? Is this allowed by the training Agency? Please provide specifics.

You're once again deliberately leaving out the key detail which is that you must issue them a card WHEN THE COURSE IS FINISHED. You want people to think that PADI instructors are forced by standards to certify inadequately trained divers, which is false.

What does the course entail? Do you teach to Standards or do you surpass these? If you are asked to be specific, can you? Will this match the training standards?

Here again you leave out key details by confusing deeping out the material with adding irrelvant material. You want people to believe that PADI instructors are unable to teach what is necessary to thier students, which is false.

What do you consider irrelevant? Are the things that are not specifically included in the standards, but are required for diver safety irrelevant?

Note: I am no longer calling them lies. But they are still 1/2 truths, misdirections, deliberate misinformation and in my view continued cynical attempts to argue a PADI bashing agenda.

A rose by any other name...

Only after being exposed and corrected on your repeated assertions that you ARE a PADI instructor, which also turns out to be false. You are an ex-PADI instructor who hasn't taught a PADI course for (I think we determined) at least 18 years.

I think if you will check with a number of others on this Board, or pay attention to many of my PADI related posts, you will find that I have never claimed to currently be a PADI Instructor. I left the organization because I could not train divers to a level of competence that I was satisfied with.

No you were not. You were confronted about repeated use of 1/2 truths and posting inaccurate, deliberately misleading information in an attempt to discredit PADI.

This is the last time I'll say this. If you feel that my statements are incorrect, just take a piece out of the PADI Standards that indicates that a PADI instructor is required to teach and examine on anything that is reasonably necessary to maintain diver safety in the local area. Show me PADI support of making your course as safe as possible.

Call PADI! Ask if you can specifically include tide tables and rescue skills into the PADI OW program? Tell them you also want to have these as mandatory skills that are required for certification, as they affect diver safety in your local area. Report back and tell everyone on the Board the way it really is! Be sure to ask your liability insurance company if you are covered to do this under your current insurance policy.

Times change, but I will not be surprised if you are told that you can't do that. Follow the Standards and you can't add or delete anything.

 

[Diver0001]

Come on, you all !

First, the weak link for QA is the dive operation, not the instructor. It's the dive op that settles the prices of the courses, the durations, etc, and ultimately the quality. The instructor is only a worker in most cases and does what he or she can (or just doesn't care after having been honestly trying for a while). Don't enforce the already existing practice of considering the instructor as the "circuit-breaker" in the chain !

IN some systems, like SSI the instructor is, I believe, required to teach through a shop and in that case I can follow this logic to some degree. Ultimately, however, the instructor is teh one in the water with students....

A PADI instructor isn't obligated to teach through a shop and even those who do teach through a shop often have the status of free-lancer who uses shop resources. In this case clamping down on shops might help in some cases but not in all cases.

In my opinion you don't address the real problems.

Agreed.

R..

 

[Diver0001]

Times change, but I will not be surprised if you are told that you can't do that. Follow the Standards and you can't add or delete anything.

I've given you a couple of concrete examples. So had BoulderJohn w.r.t. altitude. JeffG also mentioned something about things he learned in his OW course. We've posted the relevant clause from the General standards...

If you choose in the face of all of that to keep your mind closed, that's your choice. I don't have any agenda to convince you of anything and I seriously doubt that you even *could* change the way you think about this. That's not the point.

The point was to expose your 1/2 truths and misinformation so people can read what you write in it's proper context. I think we've established how you think and post about this, (and will probably continue to do so despite being shown the bigger picture), and I think we've put out enough of a context for anyone who wants to understand how things really work to get some kind of grip on it.

I'm pretty sure we exceeded "standards" on that count...

Or maybe I should post a "test"

But now I hope we can move on and talk about the important issues as "hg frogman" said.
R..

 

[DCBC]

I think you have to go back and re-read what he said. He said "ELEMENTS" of the rescue course, like establishing positive buoyancy on the surface (which is an obvious discussion point for the CESA) and dealing with a diver in distress on the surface. The tired diver tow, for example, which is in confined-2, is arguably a "rescue" skill as well.

Positive buoyancy and CESA are self-rescue skills. Tired diver assists as just that, assists. If you reread my statement, you will find that I was talking about sub-surface unconscious/conscious rescue skills.

I think it would be substantially exceeding the scope of the OW course to teach controlled buoyant lifts during OW. At the OW level, divers are still getting a grip on how to make a proper ascent themselves! If you felt it was necessary, however, you could do it.... but you would have to sell the students the OW, AOW and Rescue courses as one package to teach them all of the rescue skills. It would also result in the student being issued 3 cards, not one.

Why would I need to do that? Rescue is a part of every other initial diver training program that I'm aware of.

I deal with that in OW because it's necessary to ensure that OW divers can find the "slack" times for planning dives (or at least for knowing when they *shouldn't* be getting in the water. Some of our best local diving is in tidal waters so they need to know. I was also taught this in MY OW course in 1984. Nobody wants newbie divers getting caught out in a current they weren't expecting! This is just something that's necessary for local diving in my area.

...I've given you a couple of examples in previous posts. A basic handling of gas management is required by an EU norm where I live and it's not in the standards.

Likewise with teaching drysuit if the checkout dives are going to be done in water that's too cold for a wetsuit.

An excellent answer. This was why I was so surprised to get the call from PADI HQ. Is PADI aware that you run OW courses in Dry Suits? Isn't it still a PADI Specialty requiring the diver to be certified as a prerequisite?

deeping-out (embellishing) is a grey area. Adding a substantial part of the rescue course to OW changes the scope of the course to such a degree that it clearly isn't "embellishment" any more. I'm getting more and more of a sense that this is what made you so cynical 18 years ago.

The word is disappointed. I don't much like gray area when it comes to diver training, unless the Certification Agency is responsible enough to say that the Standards (as published) may be insufficient for certain diving conditions and the Instructor is responsible for preparing the student to dive safely in said conditions.

What I can I say... you can't just do whatever you want. If it's so important to an instructor to re-write the standards to suit his/her personal convictions then clearly the system isn't for them. But that doesn't mean the system doesn't work. That's black and white thinking.

Sometimes safety is like that. The diver's either "reasonably prepared" for the diving environment or not.

 

[hg frogman]

Diver0001:

When a dive instructor works on his own, then he is the dive operation.

When he works as an employee and even as a freelance, he faces strong constraints coming from the dive operation and his margin of freedom and choice is very small (unless (maybe) he works for free).

At least that's the case in most resorts and tropical places where there are dive operations (and dive instructors) competing (eg Dahab, Sharm, Hurghada, Koh Tao, Phuket ...). That represents a lot of newly certified divers.

By the way, dive operations know pretty well who are the serious instructors and who are the crap ones - it's not hard to tell, nor does it take long.

The fact that the instructor is the one in the water with the students is very convenient for both the agencies and the dive operations, from the legal/sueing point of view. That's what I call being a "fuse wire".

I insist, most quality issues come from the dive ops. Clamp them down, as you say, and you will improve the average level of the divers. But such a clamping is not very likely to happen, given the competition between the agencies.

The solution for the customer is to be smart, discerning, and accepting to pay enough to get good quality.

 

[Kingpatzer]

P
An excellent answer. This was why I was so surprised to get the call from PADI HQ. Is PADI aware that you run OW courses in Dry Suits? Isn't it still a PADI Specialty requiring the diver to be certified as a prerequisite?

From the PADI OW Instructor Manual (oh and to put to rest the altitude course part as well ...)

For the Altitude, Boat and Dry Suit Diver courses, Open Water Diver course divers must complete all four dives at altitude, from a boat or in a dry suit – depending on the specialty