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1. Legal and official... ?
2. Dive organisations ... ?
3. Dive clubs / schools / forums ... ?
4. Dive medicine ... ?
5. Recompression chambers... ?
6. Dive magazines ... ?
7. The Law & Safety for Teaching Recreational Diving...?
8. Miscellaneous

Legal and Official

• Health & Safety Executive (HSE) Diving Section

• Diving at Work Regulations

• RIDDOR Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 

• First Aid at work HSE advice

• SITA Scuba Industries Trade Association

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Dive Organisations

• PADI Professional Association Of Diving Instructors

• BSAC British Sub Aqua Club

• SAA Sub Aqua Club

• SDI Scuba Diving International

• UKSDMC UK Sports Diving Medical Committee

• EDTC European Diving Technology Committee

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Dive clubs / schools / forums

For a map of the local dive schools and clubs where you can learn to dive and enjoy developing your diving click here...

 Divers with special needs

• Deaf divers
• ScubaTrust
• Deptherapy

 Internet Forums

• Yorkshire divers

Are you a pro looking for work?

You might want to check out instructor Steve Reid's site Skill Circuit

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Dive medicine

• The Divers Alert Network (DAN)  - whilst many divers may think that this organisation is just an insurance company for divers, it is in fact a very important source of both information for divers and also research. The medical information Q&A page for DAN Europe is available by clicking on the Medicine tab at  click here...
  
  and the American version click here...
  
  

• Dr Carl Edmonds' free to download online "Diving Medicine for scuba divers 2010" click here...
  
  

• Scubadoc's Diving Medicine Online - by Dr Ernest Campbell.
  This is a very comprehensive site packed full of lots of useful information from fitness problems, to marine hazards, to diving safety. There is a forum and blog site. Click here....
  
  

• Scubamed - again a very comprehensive site with lots of useful medical information by Dr Fred Bove (one of the diving doctor elite.) I particularly like the advice section on PFO. Click here...
  
  

• Dr Edmond Kay - Diving Medical Officer for the University of Washington Click here...
  I particularly recommend his online lecture 'The Divers Ear - Under Pressure' Click here...
  

• Finally one other website of note is DivePsych.com. This has lots of useful information about the psychology of diving. Click here...and particularly on this site I would recommend articles by Dr Tom Griffiths, Director of Aquatics and Safety Officer for Athletics at Penn State University, especially his freely downloadable MP3 files on dealing with diver stress. Click here...

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 For those who realise that sometimes you just have to pay for quality information:

• Diving and Subaquatic Medicine by Edmonds et al. Considered by many diving doctors to be the definative diving medicine text.
  

• Deco for Divers by Mark Powell. An excellent account of decompression theory for divers.
  

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Recompression chambers

Contacting Help

Before you go diving you should always know how to contact diving specific help. You may think that telephoning 999 or calling Channel 16 to the Coastguard is the only way of getting help, but it is also a good idea to know where and how to contact your nearest Recompression Chamber.

Finding your nearest Recompression Chamber

You can either contact the Royal Navy Duty Diving Doctor on 07831151523 or contact the nearest chamber directly.

Emed.co.uk provides a listing of chamber around the world -  click here

Chambers in London and the South East

The London Diving Chamber at The Hospital of St John & St Elizabeth 07940 353 816 - click here

The Centre for Defence Hyperbaric Medicine at Queen Alexandra Hospital Portsmouth 02392 762970 

Whipps Cross University Hospital Leytonstone London 07736 898066  - click here

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Diving Magazines

• SportDiver

• Diver

• Dive

• X-ray magazine

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The Law & Safety for Teaching Recreational Diving

When students pay to learn to dive in the UK, those who provide this service are required to comply with all UK laws. The UK has one of the most highly regulated environments for professional divers (which includes recreational scuba instructors and divemasters.) Many of these divers have a very limited knowledge of these topics. 

To try to rectify this situation myself and others have organised study days to produce a forum for those with an interest to meet and learn from each other. This started at Dive 69 Ltd in Ewell and continued at Aquatic Element Dive Centre in Windsor. From the last 4 of these meetings I have produced this downloadable booklet so that others may get a glimpse of what they need to know. 

Booklet outline:

• The Diving at Work Regulations 1997 (DWR)

• Risk Assessments

• The Surface Cover

• First Aid & Rescue Equipment

• The Reporting of Injuries, Diseases & Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 1995 (RIDDOR)

• Equipment Servicing & Maintenance

• Insurance

• Students with Medical Problems

• Post Incident Management

• Other Legislation

This booklet is 1.3 MB in size and is presented as a PDF document. Click here... to access it on Windows Live SkyDrive. You do not need to register and the download is free.

Feedback is very welcome - please email me mhdowns@btinternet.com

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Miscellaneous

1. Lair of the Water Wolf - an award winning beautifully filmed DVD about the life of our most revered freshwater predator - the Pike. Written, narrated and filmed by Dean Burman at some of the common inland dive sites used by scuba divers. Highly recommended.
   
    

2. Ocean Gladiator - a fascinating autobiography by Mark Ellyatt following his quest as a diving instructor and desire to go to some of the deepest places possible on scuba. Mark pushed the limits of scuba diving, often breaking new ground and achieving depths not previously attained, but paying a significant price in decompression injury. A no-holds barred account of his life in the diving industry.
   
   
   
   
   
    

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