Instructor Training Course

Michelle Galler, HSA C-0006

ITC COURSE CONTENT

This course will be taught by Mark Rausch (HSA CD 28-614). Mark is the founder of HSA and has taught paraplegic and quadriplegic individuals to scuba dive. He began diving in 1978 and since 1992 has spent his entire diving career assisting, teaching and sport diving with people who have disabilities.

LECTURES: There will be approximately 10 hours of lectures covering twelve Disability types, what they are, how they occur, and how they effect people, the criteria for HSA certification, accessibility issues, equipment considerations, and how it all relates to Scuba diving. This broad understanding will give you the extra confidence you need to make your students more comfortable.

The value of the Lectures cannot be underestimated because Instructors are now dealing with an entirely new population of divers with medical conditions for which they were not trained to encounter.

These Lectures succinctly cover a wide variety of Medical topics that are easy to understand and to incorporate into the Instructor’s preexisting knowledge of Scuba training.”

Terry J. Brown, M.D., HSA 0792
Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation

CONFINED WATER: There will be about 6 hours of confined water exercises while simulating various disability types. As Scuba Instructors you train your students to dive based on the way you dive. If your students do it another way you must try to duplicate the differences yourself to develop the experiential resources you need to teach them. Simulating disability types while performing typically problematic exercises helps you develop the skills and sensitivity you will need to teach your students with disabilities.

You will simulate PARAPLEGIA by taking off your fins, tying your legs together and simulating functional loss of your stomach, back and leg muscles. You will then perform a series of skills such as an Emergency Swimming Ascent with an oral inflation of your BCD at the surface.

You will simulate QUADRIPLEGIA by simulating complete functional loss of ALL muscle groups below the level of your neck, thereby becoming totally dependent upon your buddies for most of your diving activities. Conversely, as the able bodied Instructor of the Quadriplegic Diver you will be required to perform basic Scuba skills, such as descending while controlling buoyancy for both you and your student, as well as a variety of emergency procedures designed to prepare you for the real world.

You will simulate BLINDNESS by wearing a blacked out mask and thereby becoming dependent upon your buddy for your visual needs, and dependent upon “tactile” methods of communication while underwater. As the Instructor you will be required to “tell” your student such things as, adjust your buoyancy, perform an emergency swimming ascent, and buddy breathe as the donor.

When possible, you will have the opportunity to give a SCUBA EXPERIENCE to someone with a disability. This will include basic Scuba skills such as, swimming, recovering the regulator second stage, breathing from an alternate air source and mask clearing.

“As a practicing PADI Instructor, I was recruited this past January by a British charity for the spinally injured and asked to organize a program of SCUBA diving for them. I have, at present, around a hundred students to teach. In June I took the HSA ITC in Kiel, Germany.
The course, particularly the required water skills while having my own swimming mobility impaired, has prepared me far better than I could have imagined. It is the best training course available in the world for preparing instructors to work with physically impaired divers. ”
Bob Austin, HSA 0984

OPEN WATER: The open water training is about logistics. You will be in a group of three: one with their legs tied simulating PARAPLEGIA, one wearing a blacked out mask simulating BLINDNESS and one acting as the INSTRUCTOR. It is the Instructor’s responsibility to take their two handicapped students on a successful Scuba dive of about 10 minutes. When the Instructor has completed the dive and the Students out of the water, the Blind student will remove the blacked out mask and become an able-bodied assistant for the Instructor. The Paraplegic student will become QUADRIPLEGIC and the Instructor, along with the assistant, will take the Quadriplegic student on a dive of about 10 minutes. You will play all four roles.

EXAM: The Exam is Multiple Choice and takes about 2 hours to complete. It is an Open Book exam and you will discuss the questions and answers among yourselves, the discussion is part of the exam. When you have finished the Course Director will correct it with you. You are encouraged to discuss any of the questions with him, including disagreements about the answers.