The Diver Medical Questionnaire

Before any course, and at many operators before any diving at all, you will be handed the same document worldwide: the Diver Medical Participant Questionnaire, a standardized screening form maintained by the Recreational Scuba Training Council and developed with input from dive-medicine bodies including the Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical Society, substantially revised in 2020. It is not a test you pass or fail. It is a sorting mechanism, and understanding what it sorts takes the anxiety out of it.

How the form works

The questionnaire asks a series of yes/no questions about conditions relevant to pressure, exertion and immersion: heart and lung disease, asthma, seizures, diabetes, blackouts, ear and sinus surgery, psychological conditions, certain medications, pregnancy, recent surgeries and more, with age-related follow-ups. All no answers mean no medical review is needed: you sign and train. Any yes routes you to the follow-up pages, which narrow things down, and from there possibly to the form's physician evaluation section: a doctor reviews you against published guidance for divers and signs either approval or disapproval. Instructors are not making medical judgments (the system exists precisely so they never have to), and a shop that shrugs at a yes answer instead of requesting the evaluation is telling you something about its other standards too.

What a yes actually means

Mostly, paperwork rather than exclusion. Large numbers of people dive with well-managed asthma, diabetes, hypertension, anxiety or a cardiac history, cleared by physicians using the current guidance; conditions that once meant automatic refusal are now assessed individually, which was the point of the 2020 revision. Some conditions do result in a no, permanently or temporarily, because immersion physiology is genuinely unforgiving of certain problems: uncontrolled seizure disorders and spontaneous pneumothorax are classic examples taught to every instructor. A disapproval is a physician protecting you from a specific, mechanistic risk, not a bureaucratic verdict; asking the evaluating doctor to explain the mechanism usually makes the answer feel like sense.

Doing it right, practically

• Complete the form before travel, at home, where your own physician and your records live. Sorting a yes answer from a resort town costs vacation days and sometimes ends trips.
• Seek a physician with dive-medicine familiarity where possible: DAN maintains referral resources, and hyperbaric units often run fitness-to-dive clinics. A doctor unfamiliar with diving can consult the guidance attached to the form, which exists for exactly that purpose.
• Answer what is true now, and refresh honestly: courses require current forms, many operators re-ask annually, and a new diagnosis, surgery or medication between trips deserves a re-check even when nobody demands the paper.
• Medication questions belong to the physician conversation, not the forum thread: interactions with depth, sedation and exertion are individual, and this site does not advise on drugs.
• Pregnancy is a specific case with a clear mainstream answer: agencies and dive-medicine bodies advise against diving while pregnant, full stop, and the form reflects it.

The lying problem

Every instructor has met the diver who ticks all no because a yes felt inconvenient. It defeats screening designed around conditions that behave differently underwater (a blackout at the surface is an incident, at 20 meters it is a fatality mechanism), and it can void insurance and shift liability onto the diver who misrepresented. The blunt framing that helps: the questionnaire is not an obstacle between you and diving; it is the process that lets people with medical histories dive with confidence instead of superstition. Filled in honestly, it is one of the quietest safety systems in the sport.