Should I report this and to whom?

[Diver0001]

jroy017 once bubbled...
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As a divemaster I have pulled down students after notifying them of course but only 3 or 4 feet wich is usually all the help they need.

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This is on a bit of a tangent but personally I think it's bad practice to push or pull divers down on a descent, *especially* during training. I would submit that if a student is unable to descend then they need assistance in understanding why that's happening so they can solve the problem structurally. After all, isn't the goal of the training to teach them how to dive? Isn't controlling ones descent without assistance part of that?

R..

 

[Belushi]

I am a noob PADI Open Water diver... just qualified last week actually.

- Congratulations.

I did my closed sessions and academic work at home and then went to a warmer location fro the open water dives.

- Excellent way to do it, no time wasting there.

Arrived Sunday; dives 1 and 2 Monday; dives 3 and 4 Tuesday... passed.
Prior to these dives, I had never dived in the sea at all, nor had I dived in a wetsuit.
The sea where I dived was extremely salty (tasted like battery acid!!) and I was using a shorty for the first time...

- The Red Sea is extremely salty, lack of tidal movement ...

So ... what's the beef? Well, firstly, I had to use 12 kg of weight to descend and I was made to feel like a freak by the instructor (although subsequent conversations with divers has led me to believe taht the amount of weight needed varies enormously depending on variables such as body mass, salinity, experience etc...).

- Questions?
Why did he make you feel like a freak?
Was he derogatory or was he trying to have a little misplaced fun at your expense?

The Red Sea is extremely salty and therefore everyone needs more weight.


Next, and more significant, on dive 2, the instructor felt it would be helpful to pull me down, so he grabbed my leg and pulled me down to 6 metres. I had difficulty equalising and felt as if a knife had been stuck in my left ear... but with enough huffing and puffing I cleared the ear...

- Did he pull you in a fast way?
- Did you give him the signal that you were having trouble equalising?
- You say you were breathing heavily due to stress, this contributes to inability to descend if you are not breathing out on the way down for a little bit.

Next day was more straightforward, but I was getting a bit dehydrated (air temp 45 deg centigrade, water temp 27).
By Wednesday, I was dehydrated and suffering from vertigo and severe congestion (along with diarrhoea). Spent the whole day on a boat lying on the cabin.

Day 4, I went to see a doctor - extremely experienced in dive medicine and with a hyperbaric chamber etc in his office. Told me that I had sustained some damage to my middle ear and this was effecting the inner ear and causing the vertigo. The other symtoms were mainly due to the dehydration.
I visited him for the next 3 days and he was satisfied with progress and response to treatment.
I am now back at home, one week after completing the course and the vertigo has nearly gone (as well as the other symptoms).

My question is this: Should the Instructor be held responsible in any way for this occurence and should I therefore report him (and to whom?)? Or should I chalk it up to experience and forget about it?

- IMHO the only thing you can report him to PADI for is disparaging your LDS who did your theory and pool dive training. That will be difficult as it is the spoken word not the written word.

- They will send you a questionnaire, which is only tick boxes BTW, and at the end you can make the comments you have made, and then send it back.
They will ask the Instructor to give his side of the story and then they will decide that no Standards Violations did occur and drop it.

- You have said you will not sue, but even if you did, you would lose as it could not be proven that the injury done to your ear was caused by instructor negligence.
They will look at your exam/knowledge reviews and general course
They will ask ...
Did you give the signal?
Did you blow too hard? (you yourself said huffing and puffing)
You were dehydrated in a blisteringly hot country and were not fit to dive.

- In summary, PADI will not be interested Standards were not broken. However a letter to the Dive School that ran your dives might help, complaining about his attitude.

Just as an afternote, I nearly gave up everything after day 1, but I persevered and now am resolute to continue diving... but a little wary of who to trust.

- Experiences like this are unfortunately getting more and more common. All the time that instructors are being allowed to become instructors with minimal experience and low numbers of dives then these stories of bullying and lack of control will persist.

Good luck with your next course, but keep diving

 

[blackice]

I understand that as a new diver you are not sure what is right and wrong... this happens to all of us with anything that is new.

But I would say that you should report the instructor...

Firstly for the potential damage he did to you, and so you can claim doctors bills from the company.

Secondly it's not the way to introduce people to the sport of SCUBA by forcing things apon them.

I think we are all sorry that you had to exsperience this type of action, but it's not typical of all instructors and by reporting it we can help to maintain the standards that enable thousands of people to take up SCUBA each year.

Here's to hoping your next dive experience is much much better.

 

[DeepSeaFox]

Belushi once bubbled...

- In summary, PADI will not be interested Standards were not broken. However a letter to the Dive School that ran your dives might help, complaining about his attitude.

That is not the point.

It is up to PADI to investigate and a situation where someone encountered a equalization injury is certainly worthy of interviewing the instructor.
PADI, not some "expert" on this board should determine if the standards were broken.


Even if PADI does find no Standards were broken the complaint will -

a) Identify to PADI that the Instructor is suspect in case there are future complaints from other students.

b) Raise the Issue the dive centre in a way where thay will take more notice than just a complaint from a customer.

c) Perhaps cause the Instructor to be more careful in future because at the very least answering the questions to PADI will cause him to assess his technique which he may not otherwise do.

 

[Big Blue One]

... it is up to PADI to determine if you are just griping or if the instructor was at fault.

At worse the temporary suspension may make him rethink his training approach ... and this is NOT a bad thing.

Bad instructors give their agencies a bad name. The agencies can only stamp this out if YOU (the diver) lets them know.

Other advice stands
- indicate precisely 'what' happened
- indicate seperately how you felt

the second one they will take into account if they just want to admonish the instructor to improve his practises

 

[The Chairman]

is the most common injury to occur during instruction. It happens for several reasons...

*Not trying to equalize soon enough. (When you feel the pressure, it is usually too late)
*Not understanding or mastering equalizing techniques. (Should be done in a pool first)
*Being distracted during the descent. (Lots of task loading when you are new)
*Sheer fear of the unknown.
*Diving with a cold or any sinus congestion.
*Pre-existing condition that prevents proper equalization.
*Being pulled down too far and too quickly by an impatient or over-zealous instructor.

But while barotrauma to the ear is the most common injury, it is arguably the most preventable one. Equalizing early and often can not be over-stressed (though my students may think so at times) and is one of the many things I am watching my students for.

I tend to underweight my students a tad... some of them have a hard time on their first descent. Still, once they are a couple of feet under water they should be able to proceed without my assistance. If they can't then I failed in my job to weight them properly and we are going to go get some more weight before we continue. Once down, they become accustomed to being perfectly neutral rather quickly. I have done remedial classes where I have stripped off 10-15 pounds off of a student so that they would be weighted correctly.

That your wife also suffered trauma troubles me greatly. I have yet to have a student go through that kind of pain, and hopefully I will keep it that way but having two injuries in one class seems rather excessive. Yes, I have had students complain of a "stuffy" feeling after the first dive or so, but that is usually from them being overly aggressive in their equalization (you can overdo a good thing). It should always be gentle and not involve a lot of “huffing and puffing”.

As for reporting the incident... you should go with your gut on this. There is no way that any of these fine armchair instructors can know ALL that happened during your class. We can never know what instructions were missed or that were made, but not followed. You have done a fine job of describing the situation, but usually something gets lost in the telling. IOW, there is no way any of us can tell you exactly the right thing to do, because we just weren't there! But now you have our thoughts and feelings and hopefully that will help you to make a great decision. Please tell us of the outcome and continue to dive safely!

 

[diverbrian]

May I ask if you recommend the trick that the LDS here uses?

We have the students and divers stay vertical just long enough to start descent. Then they quit venting and exhale which tends to drop them into a horizontal postition. This increased surface area makes for an extremely controllable descent. This severely limits the number of ear problems that we see. BTW, due to wetsuit compression, the minute that they go horizontal they will probably be adding air to their BC's to control their descents. The slow descent gives the diver absolute control over their own depth so that they can keep their ears equalized properly.

This is why I made the implications about ANY staff member who pulls down a student. If they can't sink, we either (first and usually most effective option) have them forcibly blow out through their reg, (2) go over proper descents again without making the student feel like they missed something in class, or (3) add more weight.

Pulling the student down is NEVER considered an option for the staff at this shop. This is the first that I have heard of an instructor doing it at all for the reasons that this poor gentlemen experienced.

However, I don't know everything either. That is why I previously posted to let PADI sort this deal out. This is just my somewhat limited experience from assisting with classes for this one shop.

 

[The Chairman]

and trying to get to a certain point on the reef to start your dive, one of the LAST things I try to do is to slow down already slow descents! :tease: I train my students to cross their legs and arms, vent their BC twice, equalize their ears, and then exhale fully. A fairly upright position also helps them to retain their orientation which is so critical for inexperienced divers. This process works for 95%+ of them all. I refuse to overweight my students to accelerate this process, and some may need a slight "nudge" in the right direction due to their nervousness. I have never tried to assist any one below a yard though. If they can't descend after their head is below the surface, then I add some weight (not much) so that they will be able to maintain their 15' safety stop at the end of the dive.

As for knowing it all... I don't either. I just know what has worked for me so far.

 

[twatto]

....maybe if you can somehow link your ear problem to your birth, you can sue the obstetrician instead - they're already paying 120K a year insurance - so a little more shouldn't hurt....

Oh yeah.... what are we talking about again?

 

[MikeFerrara]

From what I see, problems like this a fairly common. IMO, it's because descents aren't given enough attention in the pool/confined water. When we get to OW the student needs to be able to weight themself and descend (with guidence of course). At this point they have done it all before. My students do their first couple of OW descents near a line and are instructed to use it if they must in order to prevent injury. While they have practiced ascents already, in OW they're ging deeper and are wearing more rubber so it take one or two descents to get used to the different feel.

If a student can't descend we don't dive. I don't pull any one down, ever.

If they can't control a descent we don't dive.