To Err is Human... So how can we improve diving safety?

[Shearwater Cloud]

Learn more about Gareth Lock's (@GLOC ) mission through this interview by Michael Menduno:

To Err is Human... - Shearwater Research

 

[narke]

Very interesting article indeed! Thanks and it covers more the ground around the side of things related to how to approach the review of the incident and how to transfer that into lessons learnt as opposed to the application of an approach to help avoid an accident.
From the post's title I was expecting or hoping for something along the lines of a Problem-solving method l can use as accident avoid approach that I can "take with me" during my dive.

Btw in 30 years diving I have never witnessed or been in the vicinity of an instructor getting hurt while teaching in the water except once. Non professionals too many.
Outside the water, the other way round. Non professionals don't seem to get hurt around the time before or after the dive. Pros get scorched when blending, tanks explode, even gates falling off their hinges hurting the pro, all kinds of accidents.

 

[Slamfire]

In 27 years of diving my AOW instructor and my Adv Trimix instructor both died after having diving accidents while teaching. Both extremely experienced divers in their early 60s. Regardless of credentials and experience, nobody is immune. We have to stay vigilant at all times.

One of the last topics I had to cover when I was getting my Canadian private pilot's license was human factors. Several times I wondered why this was not approached similarly in any of the scuba classes I've taken. I'm certainly glad somebody like @GLOC is applying this to scuba.

 

[GLOC]

Very interesting article indeed! Thanks and it covers more the ground around the side of things related to how to approach the review of the incident and how to transfer that into lessons learnt as opposed to the application of an approach to help avoid an accident.
From the post's title I was expecting or hoping for something along the lines of a Problem-solving method l can use as accident avoid approach that I can "take with me" during my dive.

Thanks.

I hadn't thought about it in terms of how to approach a dive with a view to prevent incidents, other than that is what I teach in my classes by practicing human factors skills (I have called that, but in aviation they are known as crew resource management and in healthcare 'non-techincal skills' - the latter causes issues in diving with recreational and technical diving!), and the way to improve future dives is through an effective debrief which looks at both technical skills and non-technical skills.

Unfortunately there is no magic bullet when it comes to safety, but I can say with some level of confidence that safety comes as a by product of high performance, and high performance comes from learning and practicing these non-technical skills.

Slamfire, thanks. Funnily enough, shortly after got back into diving in 2006 and still being in the RAF, I realised that there was something missing from diving when it came to HF and incident reporting and I wanted to address that.

 

[narke]

crew resource management and in healthcare 'non-techincal skills'

I wasn't aware of the CRM approach so I looked it up, the analogy that hit me in the areas I am more familiar with professionally is in the enterprise world and in particular with the Soft Skills. In the Human Resources and Project Management and Troubleshooting spheres these are sometimes referred to as Soft Skills as opposed to the Hard Skills. Don't know if that helps or inspires you?

 

[GLOC]

I wasn't aware of the CRM approach so I looked it up, the analogy that hit me in the areas I am more familiar with professionally is in the enterprise world and in particular with the Soft Skills. In the Human Resources and Project Management and Troubleshooting spheres these are sometimes referred to as Soft Skills as opposed to the Hard Skills. Don't know if that helps or inspires you?

Thanks. Yes, I have come across that before and provides food for thought.

One thing often missed is the interdependence between the skills.

For example, you might have good situational awareness about an adverse event about to take place, but if you are unable to communicate that message to the parties involved, then it doesn't matter how good your SA is. In addition, understanding that your 'soft skills' or 'non-technical skills' WILL be impacted by stress and fatigue and therefore having to raise your game when it comes to vigilance in such circumstances.

 

[narke]

if you are unable to communicate that message to the parties involved, then it doesn't matter how good your SA is

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