Want to dive safely in future?
Learn about Human Factors in Diving
If you have experienced or witnessed an adverse event in scuba diving, you may have been distressed or disturbed by what happened. Perhaps there were negative outcomes for you or other divers (physical or psychological injury, loss of kit/time/money). Even if all involved were lucky, the experience has possibly raised a few concerns for you? Unless the event had deterred you from ever diving again, then you would probably prefer to avoid a similar, or worse event happening to you in future.
If this sounds familiar, then this page is for you. The purpose of the information here is to tell you about an approach that will change the way you look at diving safety (as well as pretty much everything else in your life!).
Recovery and Resilience
When something goes wrong, there is first a process of recovery. that involves support, healing and processing of what happened. Somewhere in that process there is opportunity for reflection, learning and change. Being able to recover from an adverse event, extract the lessons from it and apply the learning is the foundation of the quality called "resilience".
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If hurt or experiencing symptoms, access appropriate medical assessment, treatments (e.g. surgical, hyperbaric, oxygen) and follow dive doctors advice on current/future medical fitness to dive.
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If the event was distressing, find an effective way to process the trauma. This could simply be rest and talking. Professional support may also be considered, particularly if you are noticing difficulties in returning to diving or psychological concerns.
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Learn something from the experience and apply it to ensure safer diving. This may be changes to equipment, processes or the people you dive with. It could also include identifying gaps in your knowledge or skills and seeking to fill those gaps via training or education. For example, if you just witnessed a diver in distress, and did not know how to help, then you might select rescue training as your next course.
Human Factors
A short story about why it matters in your diving
Fit To Dive, and the resource for divers you are now reading, is created by Dr Laura Walton, a clinical psychologist and scuba diving instructor whose purpose is bringing diving and psychology together. For well over a decade she has been studying the ways diving affects psychology, and how psychology can help us in diving. She also provides therapy for divers, to overcome or prevent post-trauma issues and other concerns after distressing or traumatic events in diving. As such, she sees one role for psychology in diving as improving safety.
Fortunately, there is an entire discipline that branched from psychology and draws from the behavioural and social sciences to better understand how humans work in systems.
As a diver who has likely had a negative or difficult experience in diving, think back through what happened. (If you have not been involved in an incident/accident, then instead consider the last time a dive did not go to plan). Most likely, there was a human element involved in what went wrong.
When dives go wrong, human error is usually part of the explanation. But what led to the human error? Why do divers make mistakes, poor decisions or react the wrong way when something happens?
Human factors is an approach that can help us to understand what makes dives go wrong, and (more importantly) how to look after ourselves and each other when diving.
If you are looking for safer diving after a bad experience, whether that is for relaxation or so that you can reach the limits of diving exploration, then you need to learn about human factors in diving. Awareness of human factors supports effective learning (therefore recovery) from adverse events and teaches skills and strategies that contribute to resilience. Improved understanding of human behaviour can also be helpful in letting go of guilt, anger, shame or embarrassment about the event. So, as a psychologist specialising in diving, Laura recommends this approach to most of the divers she works with.
The Human Diver
Where to learn about human factors in diving
Human factors began in the aviation industry. (If you have flown in an aeroplane, then you have already benefitted from human factors.) In the last few years, we have been learning to apply it to scuba, via The Human Diver. Founded by Gareth Lock, following 25 years serving in the RAF, The Human Diver is where to go to learn about human factors in diving.
By participating in this course, you'll gain invaluable insights into why mistakes happen and develop strategies to reduce the likelihood of accidents happening in the future.
The course provides:
Effective Communication Tools: Strategies to clearly convey concerns and insights.
Improved Situational Awareness: Techniques to enhance perception and decision-making underwater.
Building a Safe Dive Environment: Create an environment where divers prioritize safety and collaboration.
Dives gone wrong
Avoid problems by learning from other diver's experience
If you have been involved in an incident/accident in diving, it has likely been a shock, because the really bad events are relatively rare. Yet, there are lots of ways diving can go wrong. Rather than make the mistakes in person, consider reading about how other divers have ended up in these situations. Read Under Pressure to develop knowledge of human facts via stories of real dives gone wrong. It may also help to feel less alone in your experience. (NOTE: if you have just been through a distressing diving event, it is recommended to process your own experience before reading such stories.)
