PADI Rescue Diver

The EFR – Emergency First Response Course is a general CPR & First Aid training to introduce you into techniques used to provide help to others in need in daily life.

The course consists of two parts: the first part being Primary care (life-threatening emergencies) and the second part Secondary Care (non-life-threatening issues, in case emergency services are delayed).

After the necessary paperwork & introductions you will receive your own paper manual and watch a video for each of the course parts. There is a Knowledge Review for each of those, which you can easily fill with the information you get from the video. After a review with your Instructor there will be a short exam (no pass rate).

The second half of the day will be the practice of 10 primary and 4 secondary skills. These include Barrier Use, Primary Assessments, CPR, Airway Control and Rescue Breathing. Secondary skills consist of Injury and Illness Assessments as well as Bandaging and Splinting.
To finish of the practical session your Instructor will have you solve some scenarios and put the learned into practice.
The EFR course can be done in one day. If you already have a First Aid Certification from a recognized agency within the past 24 months, then you don’t need to take this course and you can start straight away with your PADI Rescue Diver Course.

The Rescue Diver Course is spread over 2 to 3 days and consists of Theory, a Pool-Session, and two days of “serious fun” on the dive boat.

We start with an introduction and the required paperwork. Next we get going with the classroom work. The theory consists of 5 chapters, each of which has a short video and a related Knowledge Review for you to fill in Self-Study.
These chapters will introduce you to the Psychology of Rescue, Equipment considerations to be rescue ready as well as techniques used to search for and deal with a missing diver. There is a 50 question multiple choice exam at the end, which has a pass rate of 75 %.
Another task that is waiting for is to create an Emergency Action Plan for a local dive site.

We usually spread the theory over 2 to 3 days and mix it up with the practical elements …

Time to practice in the swimming pool!

We will introduce you to some of the new skills in one of our purpose-built dive pools. Here you have the chance to practice in an easy environment with good conditions to follow the demonstrations of your instructor.

Skills we practice include:
– Self-Rescue Skills Review
– Distressed divers Underwater
– Tired / Panicked divers on the surface
– Surfacing an unresponsive diver
– Unresponsive diver on the Surface
– Exiting an unresponsive diver

Once you have done most of your theory and practiced some skills in the pool already, it is time to get “Rescue ready” on the boat.

Spread over two days, you will go on the boat which will bring you to some of our shallower reef sites around Koh Tao.

The first day on the boat you will mainly spend your time repeating and perfecting the skills you learned already in the pool before. There will be some skills, where you will need to adjust your techniques for being on a boat, for example, exiting using a ladder.

We will introduce you to skills that you haven’t practiced in the pool yet to learn all necessary techniques. Those skills include:

– Reacting from a boat to an responsive diver on the surface
– Nonswimming assists (throwing, extending…)
– Respond to an unresponsive diver on the surface from a boat
– Effective Searches for a missing diver using search patterns.

The second day on the boat you will get plenty of time to hone skills you want to work on and then it is time to put everything together in our Final Scenarios. You will act as part of team and use your resources and Emergency Action Plan to fix anything that may “happen”  in this afternoon as a Rescue Diver … – Serious Fun!

After this, you are a fully qualified PADI Rescue Diver and with a well-earned drink in the bar you can plan your next adventures