This fundamental course prepares you to provide proper care for life-threatening illnesses or injuries until professional emergency medical help arrives. The life-support skills you’ll learn include one- and two-rescuer CPR for adults, children and infants, the use of automatic external defibrillators, bleeding management, assisting choking victims, and responding to someone in shock.

You’ll also develop essential first aid skills such as conducting secondary assessments, splinting, and responding to a range of medical emergencies.

Administering emergency oxygen is the preferred first aid for scuba diving injuries, and giving it early can drastically improve the outcome for an injured diver. The DAN Emergency Oxygen for Scuba Diving Injuries course teaches you how to provide life-saving oxygen first aid to divers who may be experiencing decompression illness (DCI).

You’ll also learn how to recognize the signs and symptoms of decompression illness and how to respond to them correctly. The emergency response skills covered in this course aren’t limited to scuba diving—they’re useful across many other watersports and activities as well.

DFA is the most comprehensive first aid course in the dive industry, giving both divers and non-divers an essential set of first aid and risk-mitigation skills.

This course includes all the content from DAN Basic Life Support (BLS)—such as CPR and first aid skills—as well as the complete Emergency Oxygen for Diving Injuries curriculum. On top of that, it adds neurological assessments and first aid for hazardous marine life injuries.

In the neurological assessment section, you’ll learn how to recognize neurological injuries by performing a full assessment and how to gather vital information that will assist emergency medical services. In the hazardous marine life portion, you’ll learn to identify some of the most common marine life injuries and apply the correct first aid to treat them.