Public safety diving

[MNDiver]

OK, Ill bite too..... but be warned.  I type fast and like to talk......


I have had to do some shopping for PDS training and quickly figured out it is not easy.  Here are some things I learned along the way that may help your search.  Much of this could apply to any class, but I have tried to stick to PSD.

First off, it is hard to pick your training agency.  There is no shortage of marketing hype.  You mentioned that in your research you found an agency that the instructors train all over the country.  For PSD that may not mean much.  Most professionally organized PSD training agencies have to train all over the country or they simply would not be in business.  There are really not that many teams around the country.  By comparison there may be one or two “regional” dive team in a state but dozens of dive shops, representing many different training agencies.  It is hard to specialize in PSD within a city when you only have one or two departmental customers and they only shop once every other year, you would go broke.   

Another marketing thing that always stuck me as odd was for a training agency to boast that they trained some big high profile dive team in some cool city…LA, Miami, NYC Fire….. the list goes on.  So what? Big teams with large workloads are typically well funded.  They have probably used every one of the training agencies out there at one time or another. 

Some PSD training agencies tell you all about their instructor credentials.  Lots of great real life experience… you know.. they “wrote the book!”  This is something I agree with.  I really want to know that the person coming to teach the class that cost thousands of dollars has really done this before (and is not reciting from a short course they took with the big name instructor). I want to know that the person teaching PSD skills knows PSD skills.  Just because someone is a great recreational SCUBA instructor does not mean they are a good PSD trainer. You wouldn’t take a cave diving class with a brand new open water instructor who just read about cave diving in a book, would you?   

Some training agencies show off their well-organized and flashy training material.  Yes, I am glad that someone took the time to spell-check his or her work and made it pretty.  Some of the courses I have taken came with great looking polished material that was not as good as the patched together over-photocopied packets that the an instructor put together on his own – and vise versa. Key is to look at each candidate training agency’s material to make sure that it covers what you need to learn. 

So how do you know what you need to learn?  If you are in an established team, no problem.  There is usually no shortage of “experts” to tell you what you don’t know.  If you are on a new or somewhat isolated team, finding a starting place may be hard. When building up our PDS team we looked at all the governmental agencies that we would potentially work with and found out what worked for them with regard to operating procedures, equipment, and training.  We inventoried what we knew and did not know and then sought to fill in the blanks. 

I suggest that you contact the functional PDS teams around you and a few of the bigger teams in the state.  Ask for a favor and get a copy of their Standard Operating Guidelines. It will summarize what you need to know. [A shortcut here is to call Grumpy-he knows how to get stuff!]  Compare those procedures with the skills the different PDS training agencies offer and pick the best fit.  That will get you off to a good start. 

For our agency we found that one agency’s courses by far more closely matched our SOG’s, equipment configuration preferences, and diver skill level.  Here are some examples:

• One agency taught that the use of integrated air sources (AIR II’s) was dangerous and we should not use them.  Since all of our gear uses AIR II’s (and we like them), they did not seem to match well. 
• Another issue was tether signals.  One agency’s signal procedures were so complicated that nobody on our team would agree to use it after the course, even though the agency stressed that their method was “proven” better.
• On skills, part of one course was to teach our divers how to put on a dry suit.  All of our divers already knew that skill and we had to pay for the training as part of their standard course. 

One of the biggest issues was in deciding on training was the “RESCUE” vs. “RECOVERY” issue. There are so many differences in how these issues impact the training decision that I won’t attempt to summarize here. One example is that if you are Law Enforcement you probably want to know how to preserve, collect and document as much evidence as possible.  If you are Fire/Rescue, you need to take classes in how to find and recover a cold water near drowning victim as fast as possible (destroying all evidence possible at the same time).  Different missions = different training. 

I have taken several PSD courses from different agencies.  I have had the benefit of taking classes from some of the people that literally “wrote the book” on PSD. Some of the courses were great and others were not so great.  In the end I found that the training agency had less to do with the value of the class than the instructor.  Some of the best training courses in PSD I ever participated in were lead by local instructors with 20 plus years of PSD experience.  So don’t forget to tap local resources.........