Here’s the history:

Last week I was conducting a Discover Scuba Diving session. I reviewed the forms at the start of the session and noticed that one of the applicants had marked ‘YES’ to the pneumothorax question. Obviously it meant no diving for him, and I explained this. I asked whether he’d been asked on the phone when booking about medical history. He had (the school I work with have a policy of asking people when the sign up if they have any “medical conditions” we should know about). He’d say no: but that was because his pneumothorax was 20 years ago, and he’d had no problems since then. In his mind, he had no medical conditions at all – but to us, he couldn’t dive (he got in the pool as his kids were also doing the session and swam with them, and I believe he’s coming back soon).

It occurred to me that we (as dive centres and Instructors) need an easy way to get people to look at the medical questionnaire before we see them in person for the first time. Obviously, the internet is a great medium, and in fact the dive school I work with does have a copy of the medical form. However, it’s buried deep in the site and hard to talk people through it on the phone, or give them a long link. It’s also potentially not a good marketing experience to link to the medical form from, say, a prominent place such as the home page as it has possibly negative connotations (it shouldn’t – diving is a lot safer on paper than, say, learning to snowboard, but perception is a powerful thing).

That’s why I created padimedical.com. It’s a free to use site that just lists the questions in the medical questionnaires. It’s an easy-to-remember URL that can be given over the phone or put in an email. It’s not tied to any particular dive centre or Instructor, so it could be used by anyone. At the moment it’s just in English, but I’ve plans to translate into the mainstream languages soon. I can’t promise that it will never have some subtle sponsored advertising on it, but the aim is to avoid that disappointment that I experienced last week when I told someone they couldn’t go diving, whereas if they’d seen the medical list beforehand they could have booked a physician appointment in advance.

PADI Instructors and Dive Centres: feel free to use the URL, pass it out to customers etc.

Stoney Cove 1963 (British Pathe)