What type of training...

[MXGratefulDiver]

On another board there was a discussion about training costs that led to some comments that could be read as "If you don't take your training from these guys, your training will be lacking."

I don't even have to look to know which board ... or even who said it.

How would they know? They've never trained with anybody else.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[TSandM]

I've done non-scenario-based cave training, and moderately scenario-based training, and heavily scenario-based training with compounding failures. I think I have definitely learned a lot from going through compounding failures, when they are applied with a thoughtful hand. If you screw up the response to problem #1, and the instructor then introduces problem #2 which logically follows from your failure, you do learn a valuable lesson. I think there comes a point where the scenarios truly become ridiculous; if you have a team which has neatly and efficiently handled 3 failures, is there any real POINT in giving them four, or five? A class I know about ended up bringing up a team of divers on two working posts . . . that's not going to happen IRL, and given that that team had handled multiple episodes of lesser cascades, I'm not at all sure what was proved by having them do that particular exercise. You can ALWAYS argue that it's important for divers to know how to handle stress, and if you can't stress them with simple problems, you have to keep making the situations harder until they ARE stressed, so that they can know how to control it when a dive stresses them. But honestly, if they're that well prepared, and that good, how likely is it that they'll get far enough down the incident pit to be that stressed?

People who go into situations where things really can go to hell in a handbasket, and fast, should have LOTS of experience beyond their classes. Trying to create a deep cave exploration diver or someone to investigate the Britannic in a class is a ridiculous exercise. Creating a thoughtful, cautious diver who can go and do progressively more challenging dives and build experience planning and executing them, and coping with the inevitable problems that occur, is what a class can and should do, IMHO.

 

[Dive-aholic]

A fair number of instructors just train that if their student's buoyancy and kicks are good (enough?) they won't have to swim out of a crapstorm so theres little need to train for it aggressively.

Some don't even care about buoyancy and kicks. They just want to make sure each of the skills in the standards are checked off so they can submit the student registration to their agency and issue the card...

 

[cerich]

But honestly, if they're that well prepared, and that good, how likely is it that they'll get far enough down the incident pit to be that stressed?

ever see a good doc screwup badly? I've seen some great divers die in situations they could have lived

 

[TSandM]

Yes, Chris, but would a class with more failures in it have prevented that? I suspect those divers had a lot of experience under their belts before they got into that much trouble.

How much can you do with a diver in five days? How much of it will stick, a year and a half later? How much of someone's ability to cope with stress and the unexpected is as much a matter of their temperament, as it is of their training?

 

[Peter Guy]

Cerich wrote

I've seen some great divers die in situations they could have lived

And this goes back to my underlying questions in my poorly written opening post:

Did they die because their training was insufficient -- especially insufficient in LTOTP scenarios OR did they violate some of the basic rules of their training which led to the incidents? Or, in fact, was their training irrelevant to the incidents? (Query -- Once you are "X" years out from your training, is the training what is relevant or your experiences since that training?)

Or as written by someone much more educated and experienced than I, were they far enough away from their training that it didn't matter any more. Were they "experienced technical divers" who, as result of their experience(s) got themselves into situations which led to their deaths?

 

[cerich]

Yes, Chris, but would a class with more failures in it have prevented that? I suspect those divers had a lot of experience under their belts before they got into that much trouble.

How much can you do with a diver in five days? How much of it will stick, a year and a half later? How much of someone's ability to cope with stress and the unexpected is as much a matter of their temperament, as it is of their training?

Not all but lets say half, then throw in a team approach and all of a sudden there is a very good chance that half of the team will be able to deal MUCH more effectively than if we hadn't trained them to muscle memory in water comfort and confidence. We have a lot of really great skilled divers that have never been stressed enough to develop that ability. Make no mistake not everybody can reach that, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try.

 

[cerich]

Cerich wrote
And this goes back to my underlying questions in my poorly written opening post:

Did they die because their training was insufficient -- especially insufficient in LTOTP scenarios OR did they violate some of the basic rules of their training which led to the incidents? Or, in fact, was their training irrelevant to the incidents? (Query -- Once you are "X" years out from your training, is the training what is relevant or your experiences since that training?)

Or as written by someone much more educated and experienced than I, were they far enough away from their training that it didn't matter any more. Were they "experienced technical divers" who, as result of their experience(s) got themselves into situations which led to their deaths?

this begs more to complacency, which is very common as a root failure among experienced technical divers. IMHO the best means to overcome complacency is to take a break from routine diving and engage in extensive work ups, in other words training in the multiple unlikely failures mode.It shakes the dust off, allows you to get back up to speed. It is also a great means of expanding the knowledge and skills of all involved. In flying we have a bi annual, in diving we don't. We should.

 

[RJP]

Just musing and looking for your thoughts on the questions.

I'm not sure exactly how to do it but the best approach - which I assume is what the current method is attempting - is one that allows the the instructor to determine where/when/why/how the STUDENT will FAIL. It's cliche, but we learn by our mistakes, not our successes. In order to understand where/when/why/how a student will fail, the instructor needs to seem him/her fail. If they don't, you can't be sure whether they "did it right" by dumb luck.

Lynn will relate: it's why clinical trials are done the way they are. To determine whether a drug/procedure/intervention is effective you need a sufficiently large number of observations - and statistical power - to be certain that the results of the trial are not simply to due to chance (p<.005).

Training is the same way. You do a lights out, no-mask exit once; big deal. Twice? Lucky. Three times? Still lucky. Four times? Now I don't know if you've learned it, or are simply aping it. So I need to introduce another variable, because I need to see you fail, in order to know if you've learned. And unless I want to spend weeks, maybe months, waiting for you to fail on your own, we're going to need some artificial charlie foxtrot's and/or some long days.

Back to the clinical trial example, for Lynn anyway, think about the HOPE study (or any other landmark CV trial) where the study population was +55yrs, documented CV risk, plus one or more additional risk factors such as smoking, overweight, diabetes, previous MI, family history, etc, etc. Why did we do it that way? Because we needed enough primary FAILURES (MI/Stroke/CV deaths) and secondary FAILURES (hospitalizations/revascularizations/etc) over a reasonable period of time in order to determine efficacy. If the study was done in otherwise healthy individuals we'd still be waiting for enough bad outcomes to detect the study effect.

My cavern instructor was pretty clear about his intentions: "You will fail at some point, I have no doubt. I'm not looking to see if the cave, or your gear, or you - or I - can cause you to fail. I already know they can. I need to understand where, when, why, and how you will fail. Because that's where I can intervene and teach you."

It's hard to detect the "efficacy" of the training, unless there's enough observations of failure to ensure that the findings are not due to chance.

 

[rjack321]

snip
It's hard to detect the "efficacy" of the training, unless there's enough observations of failure to ensure that the findings are not due to chance.

The only thing I can add to this excellent summation is that like studies, failures need to be well designed to be effective lessons. Not just seemingly random floods, then tornados followed by pestilence and famine.