FROM THE SAFETY STOP
//
P E R S P E C T I V E S
8
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WINTER 2014
Learning from Each Other
DAN’s Online Incident
Reporting System
W
hether it’s a skipped checklist that
leads to an equipment mishap or a
miscalculation resulting in buoyancy
issues, we have all made mistakes as
divers. No matter how many years we’ve been diving
and how many dives we have logged, we are all fallible.
Small mistakes commonly result in minor annoyances,
but in some cases they can lead to complex cascades
that result in injuries and emergency calls to DAN®.
DAN receives thousands of emergency and
nonemergency calls each year, but countless events
occur that never result in a call to DAN. That’s
thousands of experiences that the dive community
could learn from that were never shared — until now.
The DAN team has established the Online Incident
Reporting System, which enables you to take an active
role in our research process.
If you’ve experienced a diving incident, I encourage
you to spend five minutes to complete the anonymous
online incident report. The five minutes you spend
sharing your story could very well save a life.
As Your Dive Safety Association, DAN is embarking
on a global initiative in support of incident prevention
and incident management to bring heightened
awareness to diver safety. This reporting system is a
major component of the initiative.
This critical tool, developed by our team of research
experts, provides the platform we need to capture
detailed information about unforeseen safety issues in
novel diving practices, whether recreational, breath-
hold, technical or public safety. This data helps
us identify trends and determine critical routes of
exploration for dive medical and safety research. It is
a central repository of information that helps DAN
effectively serve the global diving community.
By capturing these experiences we are expanding
the resources available to help you make informed
decisions about your dive practices. This initiative
allows DAN to gather information about possible
diving equipment failures, and it will strengthen our
basis for human-factor safety research. The data
gathered through this system offers important insights
that will help us tailor our efforts to developing and
deploying essential prevention strategies.
Each case submitted presents a learning opportunity.
When you visit the reporting-system landing page,
DAN.org/Diving-Incidents, you can review the real-
life experiences divers submitted through the system
as well as expert commentary. The page also features
Incident Insight articles from this magazine and offers
expert analysis of real events, their management and
tangible steps for avoidance. The DAN team has also
developed downloadable guides on health risk factors,
safety protocols and equipment testing.
As the leader in dive safety, we believe it is important
to offer the community a means of sharing information
so that through collective learning experiences we can
enhance the safety of our sport.
AD
SHARE YOUR STORY
Have you experienced a dive incident? Share your story at
DAN.org/IncidentReport.
B Y B I L L Z I E F L E
STEVE EXUM
