The British weather has been keeping us all entertained and in true British style, we ‘keep calm and carry on’. As divers, we try to get a dive somewhere, if that fails there is always kit maintenance, drysuit repairs, boats to fix or the opportunity to go and visit some tourist sites.
For us, any quiet time is spent wisely (oops, we used the ‘Q’ word!). Running a chamber comes with a huge ‘things to do’ list, including maintenance schedules, quality audits, risk assessments, recruitment, policy reviews and staff training, etc.
Our maintenance this month was mainly checking through our fire safety systems. Remember last month we had a new fire extinguisher? Well, that now hangs out in our entrance lock of the chamber ready for action, while the previous resident has gone off for its annual service.
Managing Downtime and Emergencies at Our Dive Chamber
The main chamber fire system is maintained on a regular basis, water samples are sent off to be tested and it has a six-month drain down and refill. This rather large red tank holds 800 litres of water and the last thing we want to do is give you a waterborne disease when the system is triggered.
In this photo, our member of staff is charging the system with nitrogen after it has been refilled with water – not sure if he’s happy about his photo being taken, or that he is concentrating really hard!
As we have had a couple of new staff, we threw them in at the deep end (couldn’t resist that!). We gave them enough reading material to sink a battleship along with a mountain of induction paperwork to fill in. They were also subjected to a HSE Medical, which includes the dreaded Chester step test – we like to surprise them!
The new and the current staff were then put through some medical emergency scenarios, outside and inside the chamber.
We wanted to see how they would operate as a team and manage the medical event. Our manikin, Doris, had to simulate anaphylaxis, hypoglycemia, asthma, and a panic attack.
These illnesses can happen inside the chamber at any time so it was great to see them having a brainstorming session to see how they would assess the patient, work with the doctor, surface with the patient and then continue treatment.
We are glad to say the staff did a fantastic job ng represented. The group work hard to look at new standards that are coming in and how to implement them into the industry.
The museum is really worth a look around if you are in the area, they are a charity and deserve all the support they can get.
You can visit Diving Museum Website.
This article was originally published in Scuba Diver UK #76.
Subscribe digitally and read more great stories like this from anywhere in the world in a mobile-friendly format. Linked from Chamber Diaries
