DAN Training Skills in Action

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DiverDAN

DAN Insider
Scuba Instructor
Messages
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Location
Durham, NC
Have you ever put your DAN training into action (in OR out of the water)? Tell us your story – it may be in Alert Diver!
 
Nope, and I hope I never have to, but I know that if I'll be ready should the need arise.
 
It's hard to say whether it was DAN training per say, since I've had First Aid training from a few agencies. Here's two stories:

#1:
While working as a cart attendant I sliced my thumb open along the main automatic sliding doors. The sliding doors are made of a hollow aluminum frame. To allow the dead bolt to lock, portions of the frame are cut out. As I was walking out the door and put my hand along the door's frame to swing around to the outside quickly. Turns out the manufacturers don't file smooth the cutouts; my thumb slipped into the cutout and my momentum lead to a nasty-bloody laceration with a good chunk of skin still attached and hanging.

First aid training kicked; I realigned my skin and put pressure on the wound while I walked myself to the bathroom sink.
After washing the wound I tightly wrapped a bandaid on the wound and kept pressure by clenching my thumb in a fist. Work went on and the bleeding stopped within the hour.

The next day I cut off the remaining chunk of skin and applied some liquid bandaid so I could enjoy some back-to-back days of diving.

#2:
I was playing surface support in a kayak for my university's scientific diving class. Ironically we were practicing Rescue skills and the conditions were ripe for our mock scenarios. The waves were tall (6ft avg maxing at 10ft on certain sets) and smashing all day along the sandy beach. Visibility was pretty bad as well, 3' and murky from the silty sand.
I was lucky enough to be launched from our boat 500yds from shore where our floats were set up. The students however, had to make a surf entry in full kit using their snorkels to conserve on air.

While playing overwatch I came across one buddy pair who had just entered through a large set. One student was complaining of seeing black spots in her vision. I told the buddy pair to stop swimming and pulled along side them. I did a Neuralogical Assessment and then asked her to recount the events during her entry.

She said she had swallowed a lot of water and was short of breath. I decided to have her grab a hold of my kayak while I towed her to the floats. After having a short conversation with the buddy pair and instructors, she was feeling better and we cleared her to continue with the skills checkout.

The conclusion I came up with was she had just taken a CO2 hit. A few days after the ocean session and a doctor's visit later, she was diagnosed to have had a concussion but was still clear to dive. What she had forgot to mention was that during entry, a wave had smashed her first stage into the back of her head. After hearing this, her symptoms then made much more sense.

It's hard to say what I could have done differently, given the information I don't know what other diagnosis' I could have come up with. Had I known she had hit her head I would have guessed concussion and suggested she sit out the dive on the boat.
I count this more as a learning experience rather than a test of my FA skills. From now on I'm adding question "did you hit your head on anything?" to my assessment list.
 

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