Been involved in an accident?

[The Chad]

I was just curious who here has put their training to the test in real life. I'm not talking about witnessing an event or being involved in a recovery. I would like to hear from those who have tried to make a difference. That is of course if they feel okay talking about it. Has it affected you in any paticullar way?

 

[rakkis]

Had to perform CPR on somebody else's student once. Luckily it was out of the water in the parking lot before gearing up. He made it through.

I guess I'm more confident in handling myself should tat situation ever come across again <knocks on wood>.

 

[astromattical]

I have done CPR many times over the past 6 years (I used to be a volunteer EMT and paid EMT in a large city). While not having any scuba related incidents, I have used skills that apply directly to diving accidents.

How has it affected me? It has given me the knowledge and confidence to proparly handle any situation, whether I need to do CPR on an 80 year old or an 8 month old baby. When it's time to take care of a person, nothing matters at that time except what needs to be done.

It has also shown me that CPR started within 1 minute of the person's heart stopping makes a world of a difference. In all the times I've done CPR, I have found two distinct outcomes. If CPR was started by someone within 1 minute, every single person lived. One of the most rewarding things I've seen was an older gentleman who had a heart attack and was lucky enough to have someone start CPR right away. We took over and transported him to the hospital. Later that night took another patient to the hospital and there he was, sitting up in his hospital bed smiling with his family around.

If CPR was not started until I arrived in the ambulance (average 4-6 minutes), every patient passed away no matter what we did or the hospital did.

 

[The Chad]

Wow that is some story, it must really be something to see an end result of someone sitting up in bed. That is some very interesting info about what you've found in reguard to time. Thank you both for sharing

 

[Scottri]

One in water rescue that had a good ending. Not a medical emergency just a panicked diver. One rescue that resulted in a fatality, classic sceanario, diver surfaced unconcious, towed to shore, stripped out of his gear and CPR started. He didn't make it. I work as a DM so I've been drilled on rescues for years and I was with a very experienced staff that worked very well together. One of our group was an EMT that handled the shot calling and the rest of us helped where needed with CPR and other details. I felt like our training really helped. After it was over we discussed it in depth and there wasn't much we would do different.

The end result was that I have absolute faith in my buddies to handle things in an emergency. Nobody freaked out, everyone did what needed to be done or could be done. It sobers you up and makes you think hard about a lot of things. It makes you appreciate how fragile life is sometimes.

Luckily the victim was not one our students or even known to us, that would have been very hard to handle.

 

[lamont]

one bad ending:

http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/accidents-incidents/151125-seattle-diver-death.html

Northwest Diver - Heard they pulled a diver out of cove 2 this evening, hope everyone involved is ok.

 

[cowjazz]

I was involved in an incident where a dive master on a nearby boat expired, and our boat went to pick up the divers in his group. At the scene I spotted, and pulled an unconscious dive from the water. We had several people with medical training on our boat who performed CPR, but the victim was beyond help.

How did it affect me? I enrolled in a rescue diver course (with three other divers involved in the incident), and learned never to assume my safety is guaranteed because I'm at a highly rated dive resort. My safety is my responsibility.

 

[texdiveguy]

Earlier this year I did an in water rescue of two divers... (their poor planning/old gear/no recent experc./panic)... I was in the right place at the right time or this incident would have gone from very bad to worse very quickly. Yes, my training and dive experience and calm head payed off big dividends for us three. Thank goods for awesome shore support once out of the water!

 

[MBH]

I was involved in a close call back in early June. We were diving off a boat in a lake here in GA. I had never dove with this guy before but he seemed pretty squared away so it was a go. The plan was we'd hit the water, surface swim about 50' away from the boat, drop to 10', do a bubble check and a quick S-drill, then descend to about 65' and work our way back to the boat.

We hit the water did the short surface swim, everything was fine. We or should I say I dropped to 10' and stopped for the bubble check but the other guy just kept descending. My first though was he forgot about the bubble check and S-drill. I waited on him for maybe 5 seconds and then I followed his bubble trail down only to meet him coming back up. I could tell something was wrong by how hard he was kicking. I gave him an OK and he shook his head NO but he didn't indicate his problem.

I followed him up and as soon as we corked he said "help, I can't stay up!". I actually suprised myself- I didn't think, I just acted- I got a good grip on his harness and hit my inflator until my opv started to vent. I remember looking him dead in the eyes and saying "it's ok, I got you, we're cool".

I kept us both up and we swam back to the boat and called it a day. The bad thing about all this was he really hurt his ears as he couldn't equalize on his uncontrolled descent.

What caused all this was that his inflator hose elbow had came off at the wing.

 

[Alkiman]

I think almost every DM/Instructor has had to deal with a rescue scenario at some point. I have only had one UW scream reg r but no r&r. Did CPR and had her sitting on beach by the time EMTs showed up. But you deal with panicked divers all the time. My experience has been to learn to interpret signs of discomfort and anxiety so that you can stop the problem BEFORE it's a full on rescue scenario.