Rescue scuba diver course

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Are you doing it in Italy? May I ask you when and where?

I live close to Milan, Lombardia, and I will take the course with my instructor here. Generally we go to Liguria or sometimes to the Lake Como. Right now there a sort of partial lockdown so there are online lessons and recreational scuba activities are not allowed (the dives I mean). I can see you are from Lyon, if you happen to go to Liguria maybe we can meet for a dive one day when the lockdown will be over
 
I tell all my rescue students to concentrate on the fact that a recreational rescue diver course DOES NOT make you a PSD diver.

Thanks for your post Jim. Concerning being a PSD diver, I was told that this course actually teaches more about rescuing yourself than about rescuing others LOL
 
It's hard to give advice since I hear the course varies a lot according to instructor. Mine was not particularly hard physically, but I found it a challenge mentally. So I would advise to take a moment to think things through before acting. I only had 26 dives at the time and rushed to don my gear at the ocean to "save" someone. My gear wasn't perfectly set to go when I was, so I should've slowed down.
I like you're idea of gathering some info. beforehand. Can't recall if I used my usual method of getting the manual (e learning now?) well ahead of taking the course. Can't hurt and gives you a leg up on what will happen.
 
Can't recall if I used my usual method of getting the manual (e learning now?) well ahead of taking the course. Can't hurt and gives you a leg up on what will happen.

I will try to do that, I also like to have the manual before the course if it's possible
 
If you do nothing else, call for help. If my students conduct a picture perfect, demonstration quality rescue, but don't call for help, they get to re-do it.

Also know that with current COVID reducing practices, there are ALOT of training artifacts that aren't very close to real life, but are the best we can do right now.
 
This is one of the best series of posts I've read in a long time. Well done all.

My biggest take-away. I wasn't very good at doffing and donning my BCD in the water. During the PADI rescue diver course we were in and out of our gear so many times while in the water, doffing and donning became second nature.

Competency in underwater navigation is important in rescue diver exercises. I had an insta-buddy that did not have a grasp on underwater navigation. I explained I'd lead a ladder search and he would count kick cycles. On the third leg we found the "victim". After the exercise was completed, he was amazed and wanted me to explain what we did. There were two other buddy teams that missed finding the "victims". Truth be told I had an advantage. I had done an untold number of searches in the air. The principles are the same just a lot slower underwater.

We're good friends with our dive shop owners. We periodically volunteer to be "victims" during rescue diver courses. We regularly take first aid-CPR refresher training. I figure sitting in on rescue diver training as a "victim" is a little like refresher training. I took my rescue diver training in 2011. When was the last time you actually thought about the lessons learned in training?
 
If you are organising the rescue in a scenario, when you ask someone to do something, check on their progress: for example if someone was supposed to call emergency services, then don’t tell him “call an ambulance”, tell him instead “call an ambulance and get back to me”.
 
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