The Diver's Log: DAN... DAN who?

Oh look, another feeble attempt at me trying to be witty in the title of a blog post. I've been watching too much Mock the Week and stand up comedy programmes on Netflix and it has evidently taught me... nothing... absolutely nothing. Anyway, on with the post!

This is a very quick post and as misleading as the title sounds it actually involved no diving whatsoever. That's in the next diving post, I promise. No but today I became a DAN qualified Emergency Oxygen Provider. So, let's treat his like a Geography GCSE question and break down what that means.

Seriously, Rebecca, who is DAN? And why is his name in capitals?!

This was one of he first questions my mother asked, and due to the fact she is the predominant reader of these blog posts. I will explain. DAN is Divers Alert Network, the diving industry’s largest association dedicated to scuba diving safety. DAN provides emergency assistance, medical information resources and educational opportunities. DAN is a non profit organisation and it was the first organisation to notice that there needed to be specialist insurance to Scuba Divers, due to the nature of injuries that can occur whilst out on a dive, especially in cases of lung over expansion or Arterial gas embolisms, in layman's terms, not very pleasant things to experience.

So, What did you learn today?

As mentioned above, DAN occurs educational opportunities; becoming an Emergency Oxygen Provider is one of them. I learnt how to assemble an emergency oxygen cylinder with rebreather mask and demand valve attachments, as well as attaching an oronasal mask (pocket masks that most people get when they finish a first aid course.) for when dealing with a non breathing diver, so I can do rescue breaths and they get oxygen in between those rescue breaths. The nature of different diving injuries, and how to treat them. If in doubt - give an injured diver oxygen, only if you're trained of course. But if you're on a dive without an oxygen kit and some who's qualified... I just wouldn't go if I were you.

Why did you do this?

This course just seemed very much like natural progression before I qualify as a rescue diver (Roll on Sunday, woo!) {UPDATE: I'm now a rescue diver! More on that in another post} but as I want to go on to do my dive master and my instructor; being trained to administer emergency oxygen is a necessary skill, just in case something ever goes wrong.