PADI and Universal Referrals

[Drew Sailbum]

Neil,

Yeah, OW Referrals along with DSDs are the bread-and-butter of dive instruction down here.

Several agencies (NAUI, SSI, IDEA, YMCA, & PDIC) are associated with the Universal Referral Program. NASDS was one of the founding agencies, but has since been absorbed by SSI. Some other agencies (SDI comes to mind) allow similar referrals, but allow any teaching status instructor to complete the OW dives regardless of agency affiliation.

There are a set of standards for the URP, though each particiapating agency can add onto the URP standards. To complete URP referrals, the instructor needs to be registered with the URP in affiliation with a participating agency and dive center. In my case, that is through SSI.

Upon successful completion of a URP referral, the OW instructor is to sign the requisite paperwork and issue a URP Temp Card. The OW instructor keeps one copy of the paperwork and the student then takes a copy back to the originating instructor for permanent certification.

PADI fundamentally raises two questions which will ultimately be answered in a court.
1) Once the OW dives are successfully completed, is the student certified since the certifying instructor has not yet signed off?

2) If the diver later suffers death or injury and he (or his heirs) allege a deficit in instruction, which instructor is to be held accountable, the Initiating Instructor or the Referral Instructor?

1+2) Suppose the death or injury occurs after the OW dives but before the Initiating Instructor gets the paperwork?

The referral location can possibly limit liability by faxing the completed training documents to the Initiating Instructor and waiting for that instructor to fax back a confirmation of certification prior to taking the newly certified diver back out diving.

 

[TheRedHead]

redhatmama,

Why don't you find an instructor who can issue you a temporary card? NAUI, SSI, YMCA, PDIC, and IDEA are part of the Universal system. Hire an instructor to complete your dives and then dive with that shop.

I decided to get certified while in Florida last month. My husband had been certified by PADI and did his referral dives in Florida with the same dive shop. I went into the certification process with the intent of doing my OW with the Florida dive shop who had impressed me with their thoughtfullness and courtesy.

I got back home and researched the programs. We have 3 dive shops here which offer instruciton. One is not really a dive shop, but a sporting goods store which sells scuba equipment and has one PADI instructor. The other 2 shops offer SSI, not PADI. My husband completed all of his PADI classwork and pool is less than 1 week. He had 3 pool sessions to do the confined water dives. The SSI program lasts for 3 weeks. We did seven pool sessions and 6 class sessions in those 3 weeks. We were also encouraged to use the pool between classes to practice our skills, which I did twice. I felt more comfortable taking the course over 3 weeks with lots of practice than one week with less time to practice skills.

When I signed up, the issue of agencies and referrals didn't occur to me. I had zero knowledge of the subject. There are some differences in the programs.

My SSI class did not teach breathing through a free-flowing regulator. We we taught to use our alternate air source and ascend immediately in the case of regulator free flow.

Our shared air ascents were a bit different. We were taught that when the buddy gave the out of air signal to take our alternate air sources and while pressing the purge button, hand it to the buddy. The philosphy is that in a real emergency, the needer will jerk the regulator out of your month and not follow the rules. To prevent that, show them bubbles and they will take the alternate. It worked in the pool, no one freaked and grabbed anyone's regulator. Another difference is that we held on to each other's bc right shoulder straps, rather than holding arms

We practiced CESA by breathing through our regulators while the instructor turned off our air at the end of the pool in 4 feet of water. When we could no longer draw any air, we were to place a hand on our weight system (weight belt) and be prepared to ditch our weights while swimming the length of the pool blowing bubbles. I swam about 25 feet doing this. My husband did not do this in his PADI pool class.

We also didn't learn compass navigation in class. My husband didn't practice it in the pool, but did it when he did his OW dives.

I'm committed to going to Florida, but I'm going to find out for sure about the temp card. I've read the PADI book and watched the PADI tapes and I think I could do the PADI test if I had to. I'm going to call the Florida dive shop again and get the issue straightened out.

Thanks.

 

[Drew Sailbum]

For those who are interested, the Universal Referral Form is the paperwork I mentioned.

Part 2, Section 4d provides the direction to the Referral Instructor to "Issue a Universal Referral Temporary Card" once all training dives have been successfully completed.

The Universal Referral Temporary Card can be seen in this attachment.

 

[MikeFerrara]

How can any one expect an instructor to certify a student without seeing them on their OW dives (especially the last one).

There just isn't anything on the face of this planet or any other that could ever get me to sign off on a student that I didn't dive with.

The instructor conducting the OW dives can verify CF skills and acedemic knowledge but the refering instructor didn't witness the OW dives to sign off on them.

 

[Drew Sailbum]

How can any one expect an instructor to certify a student without seeing them on their OW dives (especially the last one).

Yeah. This is why I will do the OW dives, but there is no way I would issue a cert this way. I'm happy to sign the papers saying the OW dives were completed satisfactorily, but I couldn't sign a certification without actually seeing the dives.

I am also shocked about how rarely these referrals are set up by the initiating instructor. Most often the student just walks in the door and that is the first we've heard of them. Sometimes the student phones or emails ahead, but only a small handful of times do we initially get contacted by the initiating dive instructor.

In some courtroom, in the not-too-distant future:
Plaintiff's Lawyer: So, Mr Instructor, how many times did you see Joe Diver scuba dive in open water before you certified him?

Mr Instructor: Uh, none.
Fade to jury deliberations...

 

[DallasNewbie]

redhatmama,

-PADI is not part of the Universal Referral Program.
-A PADI instructor IS allowed to conduct your referral dives for you but will not issue a certification.
-The instructor back home will order your permanent card.
-This is, IMO, just a way for PADI instructors to be able to accomodate customers, make $$ and not have the responsibility for the cert. Not necessarily a bad thing, but there it is.

Doesn't that contradict this?

Non-PADI to PADI Referrals
....
Certification
As the instructor completing the open water dives, only you can certify the student. You must submit a PADI Positive Identification Card (PIC) envelope to PADI for processing and retain the student?s referral documents. You must submit the PIC within seven days of the completion of the course.

 

[TheRedHead]

How can any one expect an instructor to certify a student without seeing them on their OW dives (especially the last one).

I thought OW referrals were quite commonplace. If an instructor has taught a student for 3 weeks in a pool 15 feet deep and feels confident enough in the student's ability to make a referral of that student, shouldn't the instructor feel confident that the OW instructor has good judgment to pass the student on their dives? Are you saying you would not trust the judgment of a fellow instructor?

As a student, wouldn't you rather do your OW dives on a reef rather than a lake with bad visibility where you would expect to find only bass, bream and beer cans? Maybe a catfish or two. The nearest diving lake is over 200 miles away and the OW dives require a trip anyway. I would rather make a trip that I would enjoy. I don't ever plan to dive that lake in real life and I would also like my first salt water dives with an instructor since that is the kind of diving I plan to do in the future.

I'm still waiting to hear from the dive shop about the Universal temp card.

 

[MikeFerrara]

I thought OW referrals were quite commonplace. If an instructor has taught a student for 3 weeks in a pool 15 feet deep and feels confident enough in the student's ability to make a referral of that student, shouldn't the instructor feel confident that the OW instructor has good judgment to pass the student on their dives? Are you saying you would not trust the judgment of a fellow instructor?

I am an IANTD and a PADI (inactive) instructor. Padi standards have always (maybe it's changed) required the instructor who conducted the students final dive to be the certifying instructor. Before conducting those dives the certifying instructor was responsible for verifying requisite skills and knowledge.

I also have to say that I've seen enough dive training going on that I, in fact absolutely do not trust another instructor. Well I almost could if I could pick them but usually the referal students just hook up with the cheapest instructor that's available. Besides that even if I did trust any old instructor how could I and why should I attest to the students competance and the fact that they completed all requirements if I wasn't even in the same country.

The OW dives, especially the last dive is the test. I require some things that I feel are important that some other instructors may not. Without witnessing them I can't sign the diver off.

As a student, wouldn't you rather do your OW dives on a reef rather than a lake with bad visibility where you would expect to find only bass, bream and beer cans? Maybe a catfish or two. The nearest diving lake is over 200 miles away and the OW dives require a trip anyway. I would rather make a trip that I would enjoy. I don't ever plan to dive that lake in real life and I would also like my first salt water dives with an instructor since that is the kind of diving I plan to do in the future.

Bass are wonderful fish to watch and look much more like fish than those silly colored, funny shaped things in the ocean so watch it!

Maybe some students but not me. As an instructor, if I start a class I prefer to finish it or...never start it in the firstplace. Even so, When I had a shop I had to do referals. I sent them on after classroom and pool with the required documentation but then our business is finished and I've signed all I'm going to.

I do have so much faith in other instructors and the effectiveness of agency standards though that all my referal students were invited back to redo their OW dives with me.

Most didn't take me up on the offer but it helped me sleep.

 

[Mako Mark]

I think a lot of the confusion is because the rules are changing re the global and universal referral systems.

It used to be that the PADI instructor HAD to sign them off as a PADI diver as we didnt participate in the programs, but could accept them for conversion, which required them to meet all the PADI objectives.

This pissed off the referring instructors as the whole idea of these programs was to create a lttle coalition between the smaller agencies to compete with the corporate PADI antichrist.

A few months ago I had an angry SDI instructor call me up saying he would only send us referrals if I promised not to convret them to PADI divers which meant that he lost the certification credit. I told him we had to convert them and then recieved a phonecall from the training director of TDI/SDI pointing out an overlooked standards clarification that says PADI instructors CAN just sign the URP paperwork and do not have to issue a PADI PIC.

Now, I ask the client what they want..

If they want converting we do it, if they dont we save $15 on the PIC. I think the only ones that really care are the instructors that are hungry for certification credits.

For me I dont need certification credits, certification credits dont pay the bills, teaching fees do.

 

[Drew Sailbum]

Doesn't that contradict this?

Not exactly.
(As an aside, this is the sort of minutae of detail which is occasionally discussed in the Instructor 2 Instructor forum.)

If a student comes to me with Universal Referral paperwork and they have completed classroom and pool training with a URP member agency instructor, I have two options.

Option 1: Complete as Universal Referral and send paperwork back to the original instructor. The original instructor is the certifying instructor. (Why? Because that's the rules of the URP, that's why!) I can do this for a student because I am also registered as a Universal Referral Instructor.

This requires pre-assessment (knowledge and/or pool) and completion of the required open water training dives.

Option 2: Crossover the student to PADI and issue the certification as a PADI certification. I would be the certifying instructor. (Why? PADI's rules state that the instructor who completes the open water training is the certifying instructor and is responsible for ensuring that all requirements are met.) I can do this for a student beacuse I am a PADI instructor.

This requires that the student pass the PADI written final exam. In order to do that, I may have to teach the use of PADI's RDP dive tables. This also requires that the student complete all required skills in the open water training dives. Since not every agency presents every skill exactly the same, I need to go through what I expect in the pool first. I may need to teach some skills which are presented differently or not included in another agency's course. A bit more cumbersome.

I'm not supposed to do this (crossover) if the student comes via the Universal Referral Program (another of their rules), though sometimes the student or initiating dive shop requests that enough material is completed to qualify for certification via both means.

In the end, the student ends up with an entry level certification. The difference is in which agency and instructor names are on the card.

PADI is the largest certifying agency, and is disproportionately represented in the Caribbean. Prior to the URP, all of the referral students who came to one of the many PADI dive centers in the islands ended up with a PADI certification. The URP provides a means for the participating agencies to help hold market share of certifications.