SH253: Top Tips for Diving Instructors: Decision Making

This episode explores how instructor decisions in diving are shaped long before an accident happens, often by habit, pressure, and past success rather than careful thought. Using real-world accounts from a fatal training dive in poor visibility, it shows how instructors often rely on fast, instinctive decision-making that usually works but can fail when conditions are complex, rushed, or risky. When dives end without incident, messy decisions often get hidden behind a “successful outcome,” which can lead to normalising higher levels of risk over time. The key message is to separate luck from skill, challenge assumptions, and judge decisions by how they made sense at the time, not just by the outcome. Simple tools like pausing to ask why you’re acting, what you expect to happen next, and whether the risk matches the benefit can slow thinking and improve safety. Reflective debriefs and open sharing of near-misses help instructors learn, adapt, and make better decisions before small issues line up into serious harm.

Original blog: https://www.thehumandiver.com/blog/top-tips-for-diving-instructors-decision-making-the-big-ones-not-the-little-ones

Links: Learning in the Heat of the Moment: An Interview With Sabrina Cohen-Hatton

‘Storytelling to learn’

Tags: - english decision-making gareth lock instructors top tips