HOPE CHENEY’S ACCOUNT

I did my rescue diver course with Andark at the end of march this year in a group of 8 and it was a very intense but incredibly rewarding experience. The weekend started off with a daylong EFR course, this covered many aspects of first aid and the PADI emergency oxygen provider specialty. We went through topics such as CPR, bandaging, allergies, heart conditions and many more, throughout the afternoon there were a number of scenarios which we as a team responded to following our training to practice the theory we learned in the day.

The following day the actual rescue diver course started in the pool, this is all about learning the right was to help a victim in the water, I found this to be the most helpful part of the course as we got to practice situations without the stress to make sure we are comfortable with the right way to help a casualty if an incident was to happen. The scenarios start with practicing skills learned on other courses such as cramp releases and progress to helping an unconscious diver under water. I feel that it is particularly important to practice like this in the pool as it means you can react to problems faster when in open water as you are already familiar with what you need to do and stops you from panicking yourself because you don’t feel prepared to deal with what’s going on in front of you.

The last day of the course was the open water day, this was the one I found most challenging as we had learnt all the content on the course and were putting it into practice in more realistic situations. We were helping people with general first-aid emergencies all day along with people with simulated diving problems and carrying out search and recovery tasks. On my particular rescue course there were 3 women, all of us relatively petite, so over the weekend we proved to ourselves that by using the correct techniques someone of our size can actually be of immense help to anyone. Before this I assumed that I would be little help to divers bigger than myself, but it was really rewarding realising that we can in fact make a huge impact just by doing the proper training and taking the rescue course. This is why I would encourage everyone to continue on to rescue diver, you don’t only learn to be a safer diver but also can show you that you are more capable of helping others than you realised.