The first two weeks of July were incredible! From the DPV course in Sweden, I travelled to Plymouth in the UK to attend the Dive Medical Technician course at DDRC. The course lasted for ten days and was definitely one of the most important and useful diving-related courses, that I think anyone can attend, especially for people who want to work in remote locations as part of any diving operations. But even outside of that the course provides valuable first aid, life saving, and life maintaining skills.

Over the ten days we learned basic life support skills, oxygen first aid, suturing, putting an IV trip in, and many ways to treat injuries from burns, explosions, and amputations to flail chests, decompression illnesses, and even bad cases of hypothermia. During the course we also got to do a chamber “dive” and practiced doing health surveys there as well, which was a super cool experience! A big part of the course was also learning how to conduct primary and secondary surveys, such as on-site neurological examinations, which was fun to practice in our incredible and fun cohort.

Even though I absolutely adored every theory and practical learning aspect of the course, my favourite part (aside from our awesome cohort and the final scenario exam) were all the incredible instructors who all are truly passionate about teaching such an important course. They shared with us many of their stories of their real-life experiences, and the amount of knowledge the instructors have is astonishing.

During my time in Plymouth, I also spent a lovely afternoon with two previous scholars, Lucy and Mae! Meeting them truly made my time in Plymouth even more special. I do also have to give a special shoutout to Carly, who made my time on the DMT course and outside of it super memorable. I truly cherish meeting awesome people who will surely become my life-long friends, and can’t wait to meet many more!

And the biggest thank you to DDRC and the incredible staff for hosting me and teaching these invaluable skills! Can’t wait to come back in two years for the refresher!

Thank you again so much to the Our World-Underwater Scholarship Society for making this opportunity possible. Also an extra warm thank you to all of my amazing sponsors Fourth Element, DAN Europe, Halcyon, Backscatter and Suunto for helping me on my journey! 

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