EFR and Rescue Diver

Before being able to start my Divemaster training, I needed two certifications before I could get started. First, I did my EFR and CPR course. It was one day, reading a book, watching a video, and practicing CRP, rescue breaths, and oxygen tank on a dummy. My instructor, Apek was a really fun guy, and good instructor. He’s Malaysian, and been living working on the island for a long time.

The CPR course is a prerequisite for the Rescue Diver course that I would be attempting next. The course also went over the basic first aid and secondary care for injuries. This included bandages, bleeding, pressure points, etc. It is an overall good course to have because it’s general information that can be applied anywhere. So it was good to refresh up on the basic skills. I took a course similar years ago, so an update was needed.

Following the quick refresher course on EFR and CPR I started the reading on the Rescue Diver course. This course would focus on my ability to help people in and out of the water. The Rescue Diver is one of the more challenging courses I’ve done because you had to think quickly for problems that arise suddenly. We learned different rescue techniques both on shore, and in the water. In the water, I learned about techniques for surface rescues and also underwater problems. As you may assume, MANY things can happen underwater. Tiredness, panic attacks, faulty equipment, lost buddies, buoyancy issues… a lot can happen. So I learned different ways and techniques on dealing with everything.

The hardest part of the course is the surface tow to safety for an unconscious diver who isn’t breathing. It involved 5-second intervals where you had to keep the person’s airway open, above the surface and also without water getting in. You also have to keep your hand clean of water for when administering rescue breaths and also slowly remove the required equipment for the easiest exit from the water. This means, within the 5 seconds you have one second to clean your hand, one second to plug his nose, and get ready to breath, one second to breath, and two whole free seconds to start removing equipment (which involves buckles, Velcro, dangling lines, buoyancy issues, etc.

It takes a lot of practice to start getting the rhythm down, something I will continue to work on. Then, once you get them to the boat, pier, or shore, you have 30 seconds to get them in, up on out of the water. On the boat was hardest because you have to hold him out of the water (lifeguard exit), get in the boat, get your fins off, pull him up into the boat (alone, because it’s better practice, or so they said) and to start CPR. After practicing multiple times, you’re exhausted from swimming, kicking, unclipping, pulling, dragging, Coring…

It took a couple days to complete the course, and I’ll get to practice the skills over and over during the Divemaster course. Apek was my instructor again, and the other DMT (divemaster trainee, who has been here over a month and is almost finished) was the victim.

Other skills we learned were how to run search patterns for a missing diver, and how to get unresponsive divers underwater safely to the surface. The missing diver was fun, because you have to close your eyes, and the victim goes and “hides” and you have to run search patterns looking for him. It’s a good skill to have incase anyone goes missing.
But the part that everyone else has the most fun with is surface rescues for tired and panicked divers. Sometimes, as the boat would be starting off to head out for the dive (with other fun divers on board) someone would fall off and pretend to start drowning. I would have to grab a floatation device (anything I could find that was reasonably buoyant) ask people to point and spot him, and if I couldn’t throw, reach, wade or grab him, would get my fins, mask and snorkel, enter the water and go rescue him. But as I was helping him, someone else would fall from the other side of the boat, and I would have to make sure the first victim was ok, and then go help the second. They did this a couple times, in different places. One dive, underwater another instructor panicked and froze and I had to help her, as I was running my search pattern for a missing diver, and then when her group surfaced (far from the boat) one stayed behind and pretended to drown, so I had to rescue him. By far, that was the most exhausting day I’d had in a long time, rescue attempts before, during and after the dive. There was even one shore event where I had to run from the shop out into the water and help a tired swimmer.

They really want to make sure you have some knowledge and real work scenario practice during rescue events so that if it ever happens for real, I will be better prepared to deal with whatever happens. Much much more practice like this will be implemented during the Divemaster program, which I will be starting very soon.