Background
Incident and accident analysis has been a feature of the commercial
airline industry for many years. Subsequently this philosophy was taken
up by with the pioneering work of Professor Bill Runciman at the
department of Anaesthesia, Royal Adelaide Hospital. More recently, Dr
Chris Acott (Diving Medicine Physician, Royal Adelaide Hospital) has
applied this strategy to identify, then subsequently manage incidents
that occur in divers (DIMS). A number of important publications have
arisen already from his work.
It is well recognised that disasters rarely occur due to an isolated
incident, but rather due to a sequence of problems that snowball and
finally overwhelm the "defences" in place. For example, a diver's LP
inflator hose disconnects underwater. The diver drops into the silt and
visibility is obscured, physical contact with the guideline is lost or a
tangle ensues. Panic increases air consumption which limits the
available time to resolve the scenario.….
By identifying and fixing seemingly minor problems, this kind of
analysis may prevent major problems developing. My goal is to expand the
DIMS project further into recreational cave and "technical" diving.
DIMS (Cave and Technical Diving)
A diving incident is any error or unplanned event that could, or indeed
did, reduce the safety margin for a diver on a particular dive. The
error may have been made by anyone involved with the dive. It may also
include equipment problems. The incident may have been preventable or
unpreventable. Most incidents don't cause harm, but reporting such
incidents will give valuable information when considered with other
incidents. Final analysis may produce recommendations for diving
practice, training or equipment which will improve diver safety during
this type of diving.
Anonymity
No person is identified in the reporting of incidents. The information
is not available to any legal process. Anonymity is assured.
Definitions
Cave Diving - diving in a cave where direct access to the surface is not
possible. This includes both marine and inland sites.
Technical diving - For the purpose of this study, a technical dive
includes any of the following: Planned decompression, an overhead
environment, depth greater than 40m, the use of any type of rebreather,
breathing gases other than air or EANx 22-40% oxygen in nitrogen.
Reporting of results
All DIMS forms will continue to be returned to Dr Chris Acott. Reports
relating to Cave or Technical diving will be analysed as a subset by Dr
Richard Harris. The results of data analysed in the DIMS (Cave and
Technical diving) will be published in the diving medical literature,
and important findings made available to the relevant recreational
diving training agencies, associations and bodies. Again, I emphasise
that no identifying characteristics of any diver or other individual
will be made public.
