Introduction

After last week's instruction you are now prepared physically to go on your dive trip. However, you and your dive team must now complete your final safety course. You will learn about the various health problems that occur when diving. (The bends, shallow water blackout, etc.) You will also learn about the long term effects of diving. There are safety concerns, as in any sport/activty, and you must be able to recognize any problems to save not only yourself but a member of your team as well.

The Task

To complete the basic safety course for recreational diving team you and your team must be able to:

List 5 possible negative health conditions which can arise after a dive.
Briefly describe the cause of the 5 health conditions that you chose.
List 5 of the various conditions that can result from diving over an extended period of time.
Using all the information you have attained write a paragraph on why you would or would not, go diving.

Resources

Find several heath problems which can occur when diving at Diving Medicine. There is also plenty of valuable information at Diving Physiology. What should you do in a crisis? check out Scuba Rescue Plan. Need some help deciding if scuba is for you, check out Scuba Diving and Your Health.

Check out a few of these cool dive sites:

San Diego Dive Pages

Underwater Photos

PADI

The Process

To complete your safety course:

Work as a team to choose and list 5 negative health conditions which may result after a dive using the internet sites provided. (You may also do a search on your own to find the information needed.)
Assign each member of your group one of the conditions chosen and write a brief description of the cause of the condition. Use the dive doctor or scuba diving explained to describe the causes of the conditions. Once again to assure that everyone is involved each member should be assigned a condition. If you have only 4 members one person may do 2.
Share your results with the group and assign a team member or members to put the information into table format.
List 5 long term effects that diving has on your health. This list should include only the medical effects that diving will have on you.
Write a paragraph which discusses why you would, or would not, do diving. The paragraph should be appoximately 1/4 to 1/2 of a page. Included should be specific facts to support your decision which has come from information you have found through your searches of the internet.

To assure that each member is involved assign different tasks during your discussions. This will help you keep your information oganized as well. Feel free to surf other dive sites but do not spend too much time looking for information.

Evaluation

Students will be evaluated on the completion of the given assigments. You will be graded as a team however it is important that all members are equally involved. Please save your individual findings as they will be evidence of your contribution to the final product. Completion of each of the 4 tasks is worth 25 points for a total of 100.

Conclusion

After completion of your introductory safety course you are now ready to embark on your diving trip. We now know what effect diving will have on our bodies. Do we know what what effect our bodies will have on the environment that we will be diving into?

Last updated April 23, 1997. Return to the Your Unit Page

Based on a template written by Bernie Dodge.