PADI Rescue Diver + Emergency First Response (EFR)

Overview

The most challenging and rewarding course you'll take as a recreational diver. Over 4 to 5 days in Sharm el-Sheikh, you'll combine life-saving CPR and first aid training with 8 rescue exercises and 2 real-world scenarios in the open sea, coming out a fundamentally different diver.

Description

Every diver remembers the Rescue Diver course. Not because it's the hardest thing they've done underwater, though it is demanding, but because of how it changes the way they think. Before Rescue Diver, you're focused on yourself: your air, your buoyancy, your experience. After it, you're aware of everyone in the water around you. That shift in mindset is what this course is really about. At Cinderella Eldawley Diving Center, the Rescue Diver course is combined with the Emergency First Response certification, giving you a complete emergency response skill set that covers both land-based first aid and in-water rescue, all in one program. Your instructor Mostafa Elsayed runs this course across 4 to 5 days, with a maximum of 4 students, ensuring every exercise gets the individual attention it deserves. The course opens on land. Day 1 is dedicated entirely to Emergency First Response training: CPR, rescue breathing, AED use, and secondary care including bandaging, splinting, and shock management. This is the foundation everything else is built on. Knowing how to keep someone alive on the surface is just as important as knowing how to get them there. From there, the course moves into the water. The first rescue exercises are conducted in the pool or a calm, protected area, where you'll work through the initial five exercises in a controlled environment: approaching and towing a tired diver, managing a panicked diver on the surface, assisting a distressed diver underwater, and conducting a missing diver search. These exercises are practiced repeatedly until your responses become instinctive rather than considered. Day 2 moves to the open sea at Amphoras Reef, where the conditions are real and the stakes feel higher. Exercises 6 and 7 are always conducted here, covering the most demanding skills in the program: surfacing and managing an unresponsive diver, performing in-water rescue breathing while towing, and removing equipment from a diver in distress. The reef environment adds genuine complexity to every scenario, and that complexity is exactly the point. Day 3 is scenario day. Two full rescue scenarios in open water, managed from start to finish. No instructor stepping in, no pauses to reconsider. You identify the problem, you respond, you coordinate, and you bring the situation under control. These scenarios are as close to a real diving emergency as training can get, and completing them is one of the most genuinely satisfying experiences the sport offers. By the end of the course, your logbook is complete, both your PADI Rescue Diver and EFR certifications are processed, and you're carrying a skill set that goes well beyond diving. The Rescue Diver certification is also your mandatory gateway to the PADI Divemaster course, making this the natural next step for anyone with professional ambitions in the sport.