Rescue course assisting - beware

[MatWill]

The other day i was assisting a rescue course, there was 3 people on the course so i got to buddy with one of the students.

one of the drills is assisting a paniced diver underwater. as it was the student learning, i played the panicked diver and he played the calm rescuer.

one of the things i do as an assistent to rescue class is to make the scenarios as real as i can make them, pulling rescuers masks off there heads, pulling there regs out of there mouth, etc etc.. not is a really violent way.. but in a way to make them be aware of what can happen in a real emergency.

anyway here is where the fun started..

we were at the bottom of the pool.. in only 4m of water. i start to panic.. i throw my reg and attempt to grab his reg out of his mouth...(knowing i have 4 regs i can possible choose to recover from) however as i go to grab his reg out of his mouth he decides not to give up his reg.. as he is pushing my hands away he decides its time to get serious about not giving up his reg so he decides to subdue me by holding both my hands together to stop me from taking his reg.. however of course i can now no longer get any reg... it was only when i realised he was not going to let go of my hands that i decided to turn away and recover my reg.. just as i was thinking.. wow.. i need some air.. and even then he was reluctent to let go of my hands...

he got a rerun of what is sposed to happen..

anyway i learned my lesson.. i wont be making my scenario simulations so life-like any more.. my reg stays in...

for anyone planning on doing a rescue course or assisting in one be careful.

 

[scubadrewvideo]

Glad it was in a pool! I agree on life like training. I dealt with a panacked diver at 107ft who had flooded his mask and inhaled through his nose, started choking and gagging then tried to shoot to the surface.
That man tried to kill me as I helped him. My training by my course director allowed me to stay calm and make sure that I kept shoving his reg back in his mouth as he kept spitting it out.
By the time I got him to the surface, my mask was nearly off my face, and I was sore from the multiple punches he threw on the ascent.
Good news is, a short hospital stay was required due to water in his lungs but he lived to dive another day....if he chooses.
The only reason why I was able to handle the situation was due to my expert training and my TOTAL comfort in the water with or without mask.
The real scary part of the day was after the man was taken from the dock in an ambulance, his kids turned and asked "So where are we diving the second dive?"

Moral of the story is keep the training real!!! Otherwise, training is nothing like the reality you see and you wont be prepared.
ScubaDrew

 

[TSandM]

Playing the victim in Rescue definitely has its risks. I got towed with my head underwater about half the time (reg, of course, out). I towed another student by her nose, which was still sore the next day. And we won't even talk about what happened in a later course, practicing toxing diver rescues. I dragged my buddy's head through the silt, and the person who "rescued" me took both of us on an uncontrolled ascent -- luckily from 25 feet, and I WAS breathing.

 

[lamont]

Playing the victim in Rescue definitely has its risks. I got towed with my head underwater about half the time (reg, of course, out). I towed another student by her nose, which was still sore the next day. And we won't even talk about what happened in a later course, practicing toxing diver rescues. I dragged my buddy's head through the silt, and the person who "rescued" me took both of us on an uncontrolled ascent -- luckily from 25 feet, and I WAS breathing.

Yeah, I hurt my ears in RecTriox doing repeated uncontrolled ascents as the victim in a toxing diver scenario.

Once the rescuing diver has lost control over you, its probably best to come back to life and start swimming down and dumping. During the last 10 fsw going to the surface it really pushes a lot of gas through your eustacian tubes pretty fast and that definitely caused some middle-ear barotrauma for me.

 

[TSandM]

Well, luckily, my rescuer in Rec Triox will be my invariably utterly competent buddy, who will do a textbook job of recovering me and executing a lovely ascent.

With luck, I'll actually get HIM off the bottom this time . . .

 

[Scuba-Jay]

one of the things i do as an assistent to rescue class is to make the scenarios as real as i can make them, pulling rescuers masks off there heads, pulling there regs out of there mouth, etc etc.. not is a really violent way.. but in a way to make them be aware of what can happen in a real emergency.

I guess there are a couple different schools of thought regarding this? I am a brand new DM so I am by no means an expert, but I was under the impression that this kind of training was no longer conducted? Not to say that it shouldn't be (I was trained via this method as an OW and it's come in handy during real life scenarios where my mask was finned off my face ect) but my DM instructor claimed that PADI no longer promotes the forceful / sudden removal of gear during training scenarios.

Jay

 

[almitywife]

Playing the victim in Rescue definitely has its risks......

i once had to 'rescue' hubby and drag him out of the ocean clear of the water

so i thought i would grab a handful of wetsuit at the armpits and PULL reallll hard and then he started screaming and rolliing around on the sand and i was telling him to stop carrying on

then i realized that i had pulled out handfuls of hair from his underarms... i forgot people had hair there (ive waxed for decades so dont think about it)

 

[fisherdvm]

I guess there are a couple different schools of thought regarding this? I am a brand new DM so I am by no means an expert, but I was under the impression that this kind of training was no longer conducted? Not to say that it shouldn't be (I was trained via this method as an OW and it's come in handy during real life scenarios where my mask was finned off my face ect) but my DM instructor claimed that PADI no longer promotes the forceful / sudden removal of gear during training scenarios.

Jay

I know that there has been pros and cons concerning realistic OW training, etc. But there certainly is risks with rapid ascents with panic divers (true panic) as described here. I think that is one of the logics for not teaching buddy breathing, which was taught when I did PADI OW. A panic diver might not want to ascend at a safe rate and do buddy breathing - thus you can expose two victims to the same accident.

At least with DCS, you can be treated in a deco chamber. With pulmonary emboli - you are either dead, stroked out, or have pulmonary bleeding. The same with ear barotrauma - a ruptured ear drum or worse can occur, and sometime it is not reversible.

I wonder if the stage for realistic OW and rescue training should be done at very shallow depth, to decrease the chance of catastrophic barotrauma. Rather than abandoning it all together for fear of liability, perhaps we can rethink, and do it in a safer manner.

 

[victor]

i once had to 'rescue' hubby and drag him out of the ocean clear of the water

so i thought i would grab a handful of wetsuit at the armpits and PULL reallll hard and then he started screaming and rolliing around on the sand and i was telling him to stop carrying on

then i realized that i had pulled out handfuls of hair from his underarms... i forgot people had hair there (ive waxed for decades do dont think about it)

So you grabbed him by the short and curlys, I am sure that brought tears to his eyes.

 

[GulfDiver77]

i once had to 'rescue' hubby and drag him out of the ocean clear of the water

so i thought i would grab a handful of wetsuit at the armpits and PULL reallll hard and then he started screaming and rolliing around on the sand and i was telling him to stop carrying on

then i realized that i had pulled out handfuls of hair from his underarms... i forgot people had hair there (ive waxed for decades so dont think about it)

Pulling out peoples underarm hair,dragging their head through the silt...... thats funny.