Monday, May 02, 2011

DAN Courses Streamlined for Better Education

This summer DAN’s training programs will go through a metamorphosis, streamlining the teaching process to present a better organized and more effective educational program for divers around the world.

The DAN Mission departments (Education, Medicine and Research) are working together to make sure DAN training programs meet the highest standards of first aid care, using evidence-based science as the basis for the care that is given. In the process of updating the courses to the latest information, the programs will also be consolidated and presented in the best way possible to make sure divers are prepared to handle an emergency.

Oxygen First Aid for Scuba Diving Injuries: This program will now include the skills of the original course along with the two resuscitation skills in the Advanced Oxygen First Aid course. If you aren’t yet certified to teach the Advanced Oxygen program, you’ll need to work with a DAN Instructor Trainer to learn these important resuscitation skills. In this consolidation, the CPR with supplemental oxygen skill is being removed from the course. This skill is the most difficult to teach and has very little added benefit in CPR as compared to CPR with a bag-valve mask or the MTV-100. Certification in CPR is still a prerequisite for this course.

On-Site Neurological Assessment for Divers: This course is being revised to incorporate better techniques but will not change significantly. However, the prerequisite to be certified in Oxygen First Aid for Scuba Diving Injuries has been dropped. Effective immediately, you can teach this program to anyone without any prerequisites.

Diving Emergency Management Provider (DEMP): The new version of DEMP will now include all the skills from the Oxygen and Advanced Oxygen first aid courses as well as Basic Life Support and First Aid (BLSFA), First Aid for Hazardous Marine Life Injuries and the On-Site Neurological Assessment for Divers courses.

To further augment DAN course offerings, DAN will release the new Basic Life Support for Health Care Providers (BLSHCP) course, which will encompass everything in BLSFA along with one- and two-rescuer CPR for adults, children and infants and suctioning, among other skills.

Diving First Aid for Professional Divers: This course will mirror the DEMP course, with the inclusion of the BLSHCP program. The market restriction will also be lifted so that dive instructors and divemasters will be able to take this course.

Along with these revisions, all DAN programs, including both BLS courses, will have online knowledge development. As a DAN Instructor, you will have the option of using the online knowledge development or using the traditional classroom method. This gives you additional options when scheduling classes.

In the interim, continue teaching DAN courses using the existing materials and following existing standards. The new guidelines are considered an improvement but do not indicate the previous standards were wrong. DAN Instructors will have until the end of 2011 to use existing materials they have in stock before being asked to use the revised materials exclusively.

Please email omnidive@gmail.com if you are interested or want additional information.

Diving Emergency Specialist ProgramTo Change with Course Revisions

The Diving Emergency Specialist (DES) recognition program is intended to encourage divers to seek continuing diving education. For years DAN statistics have shown that when divers are better educated, they are safer divers.

As DAN Education prepares to streamline courses, the requirements to be a DES diver and a DES Instructor will change as well.

To be a DES diver, one must meet the following qualifications:

• certification as a Rescue Diver and

• certification in DAN Diving Emergency Management Provider (DEMP) or DAN Diving First Aid for Professional Divers, or

• certification in the DAN Basic Life Support and First Aid (BLSFA) or Basic Life Support for Health Care Providers (BLSHCP) course and the three stand-alone DAN courses:

— DAN Oxygen First Aid for Scuba Diving Injuries

— DAN First Aid for Hazardous Marine Life Injuries

— DAN On-Site Neurological Assessment for Divers

To be a DES Instructor or Trainer, one must:

• be certified to teach the DAN BLSFA or the DAN BLSHCP courses and

• have taught at least eight providers in either the DAN DEMP or Professional Divers courses or

• be certified in all four stand-alone programs and have taught eight providers in each course.

Existing DAN DES Instructors and Instructor Trainers will be grandfathered in and will not have to requalify for the new standards.

These new standards will take effect in the summer of 2011 after the program revisions are available. However, both standards will be honored throughout 2011 as DAN Instructors make the transition.

Rest assured that the DES recognition program is not going away; it is a year-round program. Every year in the fall, DAN Education offers a promotion called the DES Quest to encourage more divers to seek education. Watch the summer issue of Oxygen Window for information about the 2011 promotion.

Please email omnidive@gmail.com if you are interested or want additional information.

DAN Announces New Standards for Becoming a DAN Instructor Trainer

DAN Announces New Standards for Becoming a DAN Instructor Trainer

Over the years, we’ve had to tell many good instructor trainers that they couldn’t be DAN Trainers because they lacked a scuba instructor trainer rating. Many of these people have had years of teaching instructor level classes in other programs but simply weren’t interested in becoming scuba diving course directors, instructor qualifiers or instructor trainers.

While experience in diving is certainly one part of being a DAN Instructor Trainer, enthusiasm, love of teaching and experience in other venues are often just as important. With that in mind, DAN Education has opened the opportunity to become a DAN Instructor Trainer to a wider net of skilled and experienced teachers.

The prerequisites to attend the DAN Instructor Trainer Workshop (ITW) now include the following qualifications. Attendees must be:

• an active scuba instructor trainer with a recognized training agency, or

• an active PADI Instructor Development Course (IDC) Staff Instructor or SS DiveCon Instructor and with DAN Diving Emergency Specialist (DES) Instructor recognition, or

• an instructor trainer with a recognized CPR/first aid organization and with DAN DES Instructor recognition

By requiring new DAN Instructor Trainers who aren’t diving instructor trainers to hold the DES Instructor rating, these new trainers will have a useful combination of instructor-trainer-level experience along with dive leader credentials and experience teaching DAN classes.

Please email omnidive@gmail.com if you are interested or want additional information.