Rescue Diver Course - I can't recommend it based on my recent experience

[Bogtrotter]

I did PADI Rescue and it was thorough and there were parts that were a bit taxing, some students got a verbal bollicking to be sure. The stress element and task loading is an important part of the course in my opinion. It's relative though, some students thought it hard and stressful while others found it easy. Overall I found my NAUI OW to be more difficult so it was a bit of a letdown in terms of challenging myself, but that said I found Rescue rewarding in terms of how to better handle emergency scenarios and would highly recommend it to ANY diver who wants to be in a better position to help others. Sorry you didn't enjoy it much, but I would feel better about being your dive buddy now than before you took this course.

 

[Mike]

I just recently got my PADI Rescue Diver certification. I took the course because I felt that if I was participating in an activity like SCUBA, I felt it was my responsibility to get all the training to be able to help myself and others. I knew I had an upcoming holiday in Phuket, Thailand, but I wanted to make sure I approached the course seriously and had enough time to really learn. So I opted to do all the initial coursework and confined water work at my own pace where I live in Shanghai, and just do the open water part on referral on holiday. I did this because I didn't do that when I did my open water and I found that it was very rushed in holiday resort places and they didn't take it so seriously.

For the study part, I thought it was well worth it. And I enjoyed the training I did in Shanghai. I really felt I could learn a lot from the course and I was excited for the open water training and rescue scenarios. I was under the impression that it would be a 2 day open water course, where the first day would be training and demonstrating all the rescue skills I had practiced in a pool so the instructore could be sure I could also do them well enough in open water. And I understood that day 2 would be just me diving on a boat with other divers and at some random times throughout the day there would be some pretend rescue scenarios and I would need to react to them.

However, this is not how it happened. For the open water portion, most of the scenarios were done all day the first day when I thought I was supposed to be training. From the moment I entered the boat on Day 1 I was told, "You are the rescue diver on the boat today. No one else will respond to any emergencies. It's all on you. Be prepared." That was my introduction and the first thing I had in working with this new instructor since I was doing the open water portion on referral.

That first day, there were 2 different diver overboard emergencies - one who really did his best to drown me since he had refused to accept the line/buoy I threw to him from the boat. And several times in each dive which I was told I could just relax and dive for a while before we did some training, my instructor suddenly had her regulator out and was "out of air" and rushing for mine. This was very unexpected as I thought I was just supposed to demonstrate skills the first day and the second day would be all the mock emergency scenarios.

Finally on the 3rd dive the first day I was told I was the divemaster for a group of new students (3 instructors pretending) and they all had emergencies. One man in particular had about 15 emergencies in the 50 minute dive including losing a fin, 2 emergency assents, 1 emergency descent, going the wrong way from the group as fast as he could in low viz (4m) multiple times, out of air multiple times, randomly coming up to me and pulling my regulator out. I felt that it was a bit overdone and really made the course stressful and not in the least bit enjoyable or rewarding.

On Day 2 there were no rescue scenarious but because of how they acted on Day 1, I was expecting them and constantly watching everyone, I didn't want to take off my wetsuit because on day 1 they had waited each time I took of my gear to have an emergency... so I was stressed all day waiting for something to happen which never did. But the asked me to again demonstrate an unconscious diver at the surface (I had already done this a few times on day 1) and of course this time they picked a 300 lb man. No issues with that but the current was sooooo strong that it was impossible to tow him to the boat. In fact it would have been impossible to swim on my own. I was then criticized for accepting the tow line that was thrown to me when I called for help [though I feel it was the right thing to do].

All in all I feel that there should be some challenge of course, but I would preferred more focus on training the first day as the course is described and then maybe only a few rescue scenarios the second day which are more reasonable. At a certain point when the emergencies are coming in constantly the rescue diver is unrealistically on guard and in addition to the stress being high the whole day and diminishing any potential enjoyment from the course, it also is not mimicking the sudden onsent of an emergency situation in real life.

I am sure everyone's experience is very different depending on which dive shop and which instructor they have, but from my personal experience I would never recommend this course to anyone who is not trying to become an instructor. The course I took was hell. It was not enjoyable. It was stressful beyond what it needed to be and seemed to have more of a focus on "hazing" me rather than training me. If that's the case, really the only people that need to be hazed up through the ranks are future instructors.

I am glad its over... I can't really be objective yet about whether or not / how much if may have benefited me... but maybe the next time I dive, I may feel something different and maybe with time I may realize some value from it. I hope others have a better experience/feeling from their rescue course than I did.

From time to time somebody posts something like this where their rescue course consists of their instructor ambushing them all day long. Those instructors are f'd in the head and probably either didn't get enough attention when they were younger or got picked on in the military and probably believe in teaching children to swim by throwing them into the deep end of the pool and watch them struggle.

It's one thing to practice in a simulated real life scenario after you've been given the proper skills to work through it previously, and another to use the simulation as the way to teach the skills.

That sucks, I'd review them on Yelp or something and let others know. I find that type of 'training' frustrating and sophomoric and a great waste of your money and effort and since there is little chance you're going to re-take and repay for rescue again now that it's over, you've been robbed on the value that Rescue delivers to divers.

 

[DivemasterDennis]

I don't think the venue was the best for Rescue diver. I structured course covering all prescribed skills and scenarios require a focus and itinerary much tighter than the op described. I it is also a team exercise for 2 or more people on many scenarios, which every student is engaged in performing and demonstrating tasks and skills individually as part of the protocol. The OP would have been better served in a training center class , I think.
DivemasterDennis

 

[Bogtrotter]

blandmc, how did others in your class find the instruction, did they have the same reaction as you? Like I said there is supposed to be an element of stress including some task-loading and catching students off-guard. In my class there was a lot of discussion after scenarios as well, sharing thoughts as well as as a few laughs. Sounds like you just got hammered all day though- which I can see being not much fun at all and probably not very conducive to learning.

 

[Jim Lapenta]

I just learned a few more things to throw at my next class! I'd have zero complaints about a class that thorough. Damn. Buck up son. You got training that others in namby pamby classes only dream of.
A good rescue class will stress the hell out of you mentally, physically, and emotionally. This is not the class to.focus on having fun. You screw up in this area and someone is quite likely to die. Plain and simple. Often the class is fun. Serious fun. The open water portion should be like the open water portion of the basic class. IT IS NOT TRAINING. It is to evaluate how good your training and your absorption of that training was. Unannounced drills, multiple problems, realistic demands of performance, and stuff you may never see all needs to be responded to with the same seriousness of purpose as if it were real. Too much is made of coddling students and not stressing them too much. Because they are worried about scaring people. Those who get scared by a little realism in a class are probably not the people you want in the water with you if the shtf for real. The ones who see this as good training are likely the ones who will save the others butt. And be better divers that are likely to head off a problem before it happens. Ie the people you want in the water with and around you.
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[nimoh]

I think a rescue class should stress you out at least a bit since even though I have never been involved in an actual rescue, it is my understanding that they are stressful.

 

[TMHeimer]

OK, I will agree with most that there is some good here. If you can go through that much stress it will serve you well. I would disagree that the DM equip. exchange is a parallel. Unless they changed it because it is no longer pass/fail and part of the watermanship skills, there was no time limit. Doing that seems way easier than these rescue scenarios.

 

[PsyWulf]

Sounds about right. We had a few unexpected scenarios on day 1 to try sort,with analysis after. They were drilling home the unexpected part of emergencies,so sounds like you got a good training run to be fair

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[MaxBottomtime]

That sounds a lot like my rescue course, except we did ours from shore and had to deal with dragging bodies through the surf. I feel that Rescue was the only worthwhile class I took.

 

[tkdgodess]

I ambush my rescue divers, after a day in the pool practicing skills... Be ready... Recently on a course We were suiting up, i was dressed first and said i needed to do a weight check, wandered down the beach and descended and proceeded to flail in 4 feet of water.... Waiting for help.. One out of 4 responded after a couple of mins.... They were so confused. I had 2 dmit's to role play with me.

You dive long enough you see some interesting things... My favorite i see often enough is upon ascent, surfacing, spitting out the reg and putting in the snorkel and proceed to descend..you sure your weight is right...?