The Philosophy of Diver Training

[MauiScubaSteve]

One other point I'd like to make. We all disagree with a statement from time to time. Some of us quote it and then point out our disagreement. That's accepted practice. When a person is quoted with part of the quote lined out or changed with a notation "fixed it for you," that is not accepted practice although I'm seeing it more and more. This is extremely rude. Disagree with me all you want. Quote me and point out what you feel is wrong. Don't screw with my words. My words are mine. They are not there for you to "fix." Show some respect to each other.

This should be part of the terms of service for all forums. It is not a quote if the words are changed. It is not friendly IMHO so since the first part of TOS is about being friendly it should already be considered a violation.

I have been accused twice in recent months of violating the "intent" of the TOS, when I am sure my typing in each incident would pass judgement by any court with regards to the printed standards of the TOS. Yet in this thread there have been many violations of not just the "intent" of the TOS, but also the printed TOS.

Even when the standards are printed, there is rarely an equitable and fair standard of use for everyone.

 

[MauiScubaSteve]

PADI also works as it's own insurance agent, which, in my mind, creates a conflict of interest.

The question is, doesn't PADI make it unnecessarily complicated for themselves by doing this and wouldn't it be better if PADI wasn't in the insurance business at all? I don't know much about insurance and even less about law but something there seems like putting themselves out on a limb for no good reason...

Any comments about that?

I believe I have already commented on this, in post 641.

I am of the opinion that PADI is not in the insurance business. I have been an insured PADI instructor for most of the last 9 years and only the first 7 months was I insured by V&B. I have never thought of myself as insured by PADI, even during the first 7 months when I was insured by V&B.

During my IDC the statement with regards to insurance that I found most important was repeated over and over; what would a reasonably prudent instructor do in that situation? If you do something that a reasonably prudent instructor would not have done in that situation, AND you end up in court due to that act, your lawyers will not be as good at defending you as they would have been had you acted as any prudent instructor would have in that situation.

No one ever said that "PADI Insurance will not cover you." I believe one of the reasons they never said that is the fact that there is no "PADI Insurance." PADI is not an insurer as far as I have been trained.

 

[InTheDrink]

One other point I'd like to make. We all disagree with a statement from time to time. Some of us quote it and then point out our disagreement. That's accepted practice. When a person is quoted with part of the quote lined out or changed with a notation "fixed it for you," that is not accepted practice although I'm seeing it more and more. <B>This is extremely rude</B>. Disagree with me all you want. Quote me and point out what you feel is wrong. Don't screw with my words. My words are mine. They are not there for you to "fix." Show some respect to each other.

While you're right in general about this point, I'm not sure you're the best placed to talk about rudeness. You do a good line in it yourself from time to time. It might take a different form but it's still rudeness. Not that I'm bothered, just in the interest of speaking my mind. High horses etc.

J

 

[dumpsterDiver]

To mix things up a little, here's another slant.

The mortality rate from scuba diving is pretty small, even if training standards are low, in some people's opinions. People aren't dying in large numbers - to the contrary, despite how they look in the water, they're abjectly refusing to die

So there's no big death problem (if there is - someone please correct me)

Now, if there's no big death problem then getting more divers involved can only be a good thing, in my view. The more people that have some understanding of the world beneath the water the better. It will raise awareness of our mutual interdependence and perhaps reduce or slow the pace at which we are killing it.

So, on that basis alone, I'm kinda up for lax training standards. Kinda.
I don't want people to die, and they're not. Not in any numbers of significance.

And I want people to start understanding what they risk losing by unsustainable fishing, of whatever variety. Diving *seems* like a good starting ground.

My only concern is when diver training isn't good enough to keep the interest whetted. People drop out a lot. But this may well be because diving requires more committment that other activities. Who knows.

Agencies can and should provide the minimum to get people going. Same way with driving a car. Your driving test doesn't involve dealing with all sorts of emergencies. That's called advanced driving 1 or 2.

J

Have you seen people die while scuba diving? Have you had to rescue and save people? Seriously have you? It might change your perspective. I've only witnessed relatively few diving fatalities and only seen a few people get paralyzed, but it was enough to make me believe that lax training standards are unacceptable.

I recently taught my young kids to dive and the PADI standards of performance are entirely unacceptable for me and my family. I ensured that the kids learned many more skills than PADI speciifies for young divers and you can be damn sure that buddy breathing (without a mask and while swimming) was an essential skill.

The PADI system is extremely efficient and concise, but it is too lax for people I care about. Just because relatively few people get killed, does not provide proof to me that the current OW training is fine.

 

[Walter]

I just want to know if it is possible for an instructor to use what you would consider poor judgment in adding to standards and thus produce a situation you yourself would not support, or would you support any decision by an instructor as long as it does not specifically violate a standard.

Of course it's possible. It's unlikely, but it is possible. It is impossible for any set of standards to forbid all dangerous possibilities. One screens instructor candidates for judgement, but it's not a perfect process.

What if he had not recovered and had sued? The instructor was acting completely within his agency's standards. The expert witnesses provided by the opposition might include Bruce Weinke himself, representatives from DAN, and possibly key experts from every major agency. The NOAA ascent to altitude tables would be provided in evidence. The instructor would have representatives from his agency saying that they disagreed with these known experts, but what would a jury think?

I have no idea what agency is involved, but it sounds like the agency standards are flawed. I would imagine, not being a lawyer, that the agency would be liable. I'm guessing that following a poor process while staying within agency standards merely transfers liability from the instructor to the agency.

The waivers that students sign have become so CYA for "everybody" that I am surprised that anybody with a sane mind would sign one.

If you don't sign, you don't take the class/ride on the boat/dive in the quarry, etc.

Could someone please list all the training agencies that require sub-surface unconscious rescue skills in their beginning open water training?

I doubt anyone is familiar with the standards of all agencies. I'll start such a list:

SEI
NAUI
Others?

I don't want people to die, and they're not. Not in any numbers of significance.

Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I believe each death is significant.

I have two other points to add:

We have no valid numbers to know what the SUBA death rate might possibly be. We have no idea how many divers there are and we have no idea how many divers are made in a given time period. We probably have a slightly better idea of the number of diving deaths, but that's not complete either.

The death rate is probably the worst way to measure how well we are doing training divers. What about the number of rescues? What about the number of people who are saved from their own screwups before they have to be rescued? What about the number of overweighted divers? What about the number of divers with no concept of buoyancy control? What about the number of buoyancy classes sold? The list can go on........

While you're right in general about this point, I'm not sure you're the best placed to talk about rudeness. You do a good line in it yourself from time to time. It might take a different form but it's still rudeness.

Perhaps I am, but I don't try to be and when pointed out to me and explained how one of my posts is rude, I try to change. Help me avoid being rude and I'll work with you.

 

[Thalassamania]

…
The definition of "mastery" is, namely, vague and requires the instructor themselves to interpret what should be "reasonably expected" from a student and it requires the instructor to be the judge of their own results. Clearly some people's expectations are very low and using this wiggle room they can get away with creating divers who can't dive.

We’ve done “mastery” to death, many, many times. PADI did not choose the word by accident and it is not accidental that they had to come up with their own PADI definition of it that is less than perfectly aligned with any dictionary.

…
One would be to QA the product quality itself and remove the fox guarding the hen house effect of letting the instructor be the judge of his own results. (what Thal was just suggesting)

I really believe in this, especially since every student needs (and does not need) different things. I am also a strong believe in challenge exams for courses that provide not just credit for the course but that also carry free college units for one’s transcript. It is apropos at this stage to point out that I have, over the years, had a fair number of students challenge my courses, based usually on the BS that PADI has created around their ACE accreditation. Every one of those student received exactly the same final exam to complete that my regular students did, and took it under the same circumstances, 24 hours to complete, take it home, use any books that you want, no help from another person. Only one person ever passed it on that basis (and I suspect help from a frat brother who took the course the year before) but that was moot because he could not perform the final pool skill.

and one would be to vastly tighten down the critera for becoming an instructor in the first place so the lazy instructors don't get in the system to start with (ie the GUE approach, which is maybe shared by one or two other niche players as well).

At least, that's how I see it. I'm curious how other people see this.

R..

I think we basically agree.

I think that raising the criteria for becoming an instructor would produce the best results.

Micromanaging the tests and results needed to pass an OW student is not the way to go , it complicates and removes the instructors input into what it takes to make a safe diver in the conditions that they are diving in

Edit: I'll add that a good instructor is a wealth of info that should not be hindered in his abilities to impart that knowledge on his students

For my classes I have produced a written, pool and open water exam that I am perfectly comfortable using with any student, regardless of the environment that they will be diving in.

There is probably an easier, cheaper and more effective way to do this by

a) Making sure that CD's on the top levels are all on the same page about how to interpret "reasonably expect"

I’d have to say that on average the CDs that I’ve met are not the “top level” players that they should be … that is (IMHO) the major problem.

and

b) requiring instructors to be audited by a CD once in a while.

Auditing by a poor CD with high opinion of him or her self is going to create more problems than solutions.

In other words, good old fashioned peer reviews, which is how product specialists like computer programmers review and refine the quality of their work over time.

It wouldn't stop every mistake, but it would help stop the slipping baseline problem we have now.

R..

The problem is that CDs and ITs are way too independent. In the old days they were joined together by the big, periodic, regional ITCs and thus all knew each other and QCed each other on (at least) a yearly basis. Now with the tiny ITC programs this no longer occurs.

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.

I can easily envision a situation in which a diver would need O/W, Altitude and Dry suit as an absolute minimum.

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.

A standard designed for the warm clear tropics, even as a “performance” vs. “minimum”standards will be inadequate in almost any other locale.

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.

PADI looks at standards a different way, everyone else sees them the same way and has since the first standards were written.

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..

The contradiction is when the environmental conditions (e.g., altitude, Dry suit temperatures, etc.) require the melding of one (or more) full specialty courses’ material to meet. If (if fact) as I have been told such a meld goes beyond “elaboration” and is in violation of standards, then (and I ask this as an honest question) how could I possibly teach an O/W course to properly prepare a student to dive at Lake Tahoe?

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

Yes, it takes a better instructor who takes more personal responsibility, the problem now is that has become a question of the standard of practice of the community. I can (and have) done a good job as an expert in such cases, it is not hard to show that such and such a thing has been done, as part of an entry-level course, for time immemorial and thus is the established standard of practice of the community. The court (and the jury) is more concerned about the standard of practice of the community and the reasonable person test than about the details of one agency vs. another’s standards, which they tend to see as business competition thing. The insidious thing about PADI standards is that since they are completely unlike those of any other agency and are complete different in concept than diver training standards have been historically I can foresee a day in which the diving training world becomes more litigious, based on the idea that such and such thing (which, let us assume was a reasonable thing to do) was done but was not in the standards. That is where, I fear, we are headed. This does not take great powers of divination to see. So you have to ask, why would intelligent people create such a circumstance? We can only guess, my slightly cynical guess is that it has to do with the profitability of insurance, which requires that you keep the rubes (er ... members, er … clients) scared.

 

[Thalassamania]

I &#8230;
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?

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.

Yes.

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.

But it will not fit into the &#8220;average&#8221; participants&#8217; plan for a vacation.

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.

[/quote]Most of my students pay about twice that, but what they get is more than the sum of O/W, PPB, Rescue, AOW, Oxygen Administration, Nitrox, Deco, Altitude, Boat, Surf, Fish ID, Equipment Specialist, etc., etc., etc. I submit that my program is a bargain, especially since I can usually save them 40% to 50% on a full set of gear, and they will get gear that works perfectly for them, with no mistakes.

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

That just complicates things. What you are telling me is that every PADI course that is taught in a lake above 2,000 is either outside of standards or dangerous as all hell.

Studies of the effectiveness of instructional programs are extremely complex, and it is very easy to make mistakes because of the post hoc fallacy. Results are not always an indicator of process.

But yet is always said that the best indicator of future behavior is past performance.

One example is the research conducted by John Goodlad decades ago. &#8230;

What you are saying may apply to the complexities of a classroom math class and such, but I&#8217;m not sure translate into diver training.

&#8230;he found that even teachers trained extensively in the program being used were more likely to teach the way they themselves had been taught than in the way the program was supposed to be taught. He could not find any programs being consistently taught the way they were designed.

I suspect that is true. Take my case, I teach almost exactly the course I was taught (modified slightly for changes in gear and environment), and I teach it almost exactly the way it was taught to me. So I get great results. This is strengthened by the fact that the Instructors we trained, whom we first trained as divers have a similar experience.

But all the studies aside, if there is a consistent and high level evaluation of the final product (which we have always had) and there is an almost non-existent failure rate &#8230; I&#8217;d be inclined to go with the obvious &#8230; we have a program that delivers a quality product. On the other hand, when you look at the PADI program (or other also) that have a rather low bar and yet have a significant failure rate, you have to ask if they have any idea of what they are doing, or do they know exactly what they are doing for reasons that are completely clear. If you have another explanation, fell free to chime in.

Sorry. I did not realize that Canada did not use the jury system. In America, we have something called juries, and people who are deemed to have prior knowledge of something like this will not be allowed on one.



It just baffles me that you continue to say that, all evidence to the contrary. PADI says divers have to be prepared to dive the local conditions in which they do their OW work. If that requires tide information, then an instructor who does not provide it would be remiss. When I conduct open water dives in Colorado, I show how to adjust for altitude. I don't mention tides because the effect of tides on Aurora Reservoir is minimal.

But PADI does not (or do they) permit you to assure that your divers are competent doing altitude computations.

But that depends, doesn't it, on the judgment of the instructor providing the instruction?

Let's say that Instructor A believes students should leave his program able to plan and perform dives in challenging conditions without assistance. Sounds like a noble goal.

Something I used to do routinely.

Accordingly, he takes them to a site in the North Atlantic on a day when the seas are rough and the visibility poor. He tells them to plan and execute a shore dive in which they use their compasses to navigate a a rectangle, turning the dive on the second corner at a PSI level that they believe will get them back to starting point with about 500 PSI. The instructor will remain on shore throughout to ensure that they are able to dive independently.

The question is do the agency standards or the standard of practice of the community permit the dive to be conducted this way? We did much this same exercise, in a similar manner, but each buddy pair towed a blob line.

Two of the divers never get back, and the families sue.

If that instructor is in your agency, will they back the instructor?

If so, and they ask you to serve as the expert witness in his defense, will you do so?

I&#8217;m not sure what agency policy would be on this. If the instructor was standing on the shore, ready to get into the water, and the divers had blob lines, and the divers were well prepared for the dive, I&#8217;d have no trouble testifying for the defense.

Since I would be using my imagination without knowing SEI standards, let's pool our imaginations.

I just want to know if it is possible for an instructor to use what you would consider poor judgment in adding to standards and thus produce a situation you yourself would not support, or would you support any decision by an instructor as long as it does not specifically violate a standard.

It is absolutely possible for an instructor to use poor judgment in adding to standards. That is controlled by the quality of the instructor, the instructor training, etc. One of my problems with PADI&#8217;s approach is that it tries to limit the damage that may be done by having a poor instructor get through, other agencies put their energy into minimizing that possibility and then trust their instructors to do good well.

All this talk about standards, legal liability, and altitude has had me thinking of a question I have been wanting to ask but have not because it is something of a hijack, but perhaps it is not possible to hijack a thread at this point.
&#8230;

Typically what happens is a law suit is that everyone is named, the LDS, the Instructor, the AI, the DM(s), the Site Management (or Boat Operator), the Agency, etc. Then various ones are dropped from the suit, some by the court and some by the plaintiff. Typically the agency gets off pretty quick, in your hypothetical I doubt that that would happen. That would be the only big difference, except that the instructor might be rolled over onto the agency by the plaintiff.

 

[Diver0001]

Have you seen people die while scuba diving? Have you had to rescue and save people? Seriously have you? It might change your perspective. I've only witnessed relatively few diving fatalities and only seen a few people get paralyzed, but it was enough to make me believe that lax training standards are unacceptable.

Agreed insofar as those divers were hurt doing something that could have been prevented by more knowledge and/or skills that they were trained in.

The fact is that people being what they are will take risks. Last december I was in Egypt and there was a diver at the camp where I was who had had a serious bend. To make a long story short her attitude about diving in asmuch as I could follow the story was pretty slack and I believe that she said she had been to the chamber on either 5 or 9 previous occasions. (this was incidentally not a PADI diver but that point might be moot because no agency would want her doing the things she was doing).

I won't tell you what I was thinking at the time but I wasn't thinking "if only she had been better trained".

Watching someone get seriously hurt or die isn't fun but it isn't always an issue with the training.


R..

 

[dumpsterDiver]

".

Watching someone get seriously hurt or die isn't fun but it isn't always an issue with the training.


R..

I agree. A training agency will have a very tough time filtering out people who have inwater skills and might have a tendancy to make poor decisions when diving after certification.

However, when the consequences of diving accidents are thrust into your face, (or say, a 19 yr old kid is pucking into your mouth while you try to deliver rescue breaths) , it certainly reinforces the idea that this sport is deadly serious. I personally reject the notion that "lax training" is a good idea from a safety standpoint.

 

[The Chairman]

This is extremely rude.

Shenanigans! The humor was not rude, even if you lacked the ability to appreciate it. Now, talking negative about an organization, OTHER than your agency, is not only "extremely rude", but I find it incredibly unprofessional and unethical. Telling us how you perceive that agency operates when there are peeps belonging to that agency in our midst, is intellectually dishonest, presumptuous and beyond rude.

Then it gets down right ludicrous when instructors from that agency post clarifications, and the same people tell them that they are WRONG, because they simply know better. If you want to be respectful, then please accept what these instructors are saying about their respective agencies. Stop trying to foist your erroneous understanding of how you THINK an agency works on the rest of us. Let the people FROM that agency be the last word on what is and is not acceptable to that agency.

It's like a Baptist telling a Catholic what and why they believe what they do and how they are gonna die. It's absurd and counter productive in a discussion. Please stop. Show some humility and try to LEARN how your view of that agency is erroneous. Demonstrate some professionalism by not trying to destroy something that does not belong to you. It would be just like me telling you why this forum or that forum is inferior to ScubaBoard. THAT'S hubris. THAT'S arrogance. That's professionally and ethically unacceptable even if you think you are right. Don't be surprised if you get people's dander up when you do this.

If you are not a professional (DM or instructor), then this really does not apply to you. Feel free to tell us how you feel about any agency. However, professionals should at least ACT the part and not spread rumors about their competition. It isn't seemly. [/rant]