Ten questions sit on page one of the Diver Medical Participant Questionnaire. Answer no to all ten and the paperwork ends there: no doctor's visit, no letter, no delay before the pool. Answer yes to any of them and a doctor has to sign you off as fit to dive before any in-water session, the pool included.
Students hear that second outcome as a rejection. It is closer to a referral. The screening system behind the form was written to let as many people dive as reasonably possible. Most of those appointments end in a signature on page three rather than a refusal. A dive centre cannot make that call in either direction, and Scuba Evolution does not try to.
Which medical form do South African divers fill in?
The Diver Medical Participant Questionnaire, form 10346. It came from the Diver Medical Screen Committee, alongside the Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical Society, DAN and DAN Europe. British commercial-diving forms and Australian occupational forms rank well in search results and do not apply to a recreational course here. DAN Southern Africa publishes the same recreational set for local use.
UHMS describes it as a three-part system. The candidate completes the questionnaire. The physician completes an evaluation form when approval is needed. Behind both sits the Diving Medical Guidance, a peer reference that tells a doctor how a specific condition relates to diving.
What do the ten questions screen for?
Seven of the ten are gateways. A yes sends you to a follow-up box on page two, lettered A to G, which asks the sharper version of the same question. The boxes are where the screening does its work. Reading them before you answer page one saves a lot of guesswork.
- Airway and lungs. Box A asks about chest surgery, pneumothorax, chronic lung disease and emphysema. It also covers recurrent bronchitis with a cough in the past year. Asthma, wheezing, severe allergies and hay fever appear too, where they limited your exercise.
- Heart and circulation. The same box covers heart or valve surgery, angina, chest pain on exertion, heart failure, immersion pulmonary oedema, heart attack and stroke. An implantable device counts: a stent, pacemaker or neurostimulator. So does medication taken for any heart condition.
- Being over 45. Question two carries no health claim on its own. Box B turns it into four: current smoking or nicotine use, high cholesterol and high blood pressure. The fourth is a close blood relative who died of cardiac disease or stroke before the age of 50.
- Ears, sinuses and eyes. Box C asks about ear disease or surgery, hearing loss and balance problems. It adds sinus surgery in the last six months, recurrent sinusitis in the past year and eye surgery in the past three.
- Seizures and the neurological set. Box D covers epilepsy, seizures or convulsions, and blackouts or fainting within five years. Head injury with loss of consciousness in that period sits there too, alongside persistent neurological disease and recurring migraines.
- Mental health. Box E asks about treatment for behavioural or psychological conditions, major depression, suicidal ideation, panic attacks and uncontrolled bipolar disorder. Addiction treatment within five years is listed, as are learning or developmental conditions needing ongoing support.
- Blood sugar, back, hernia and ulcers. Box F lists diabetes, drug or diet controlled, and gestational diabetes in the last 12 months. Spinal surgery in the past year joins it, with recurrent back trouble, an uncorrected hernia and active ulcers.
- The gut. Box G runs from reflux and ulcerative colitis to ostomy surgery without swimming clearance. Bariatric surgery in the last 12 months is on it, and so is dehydration needing medical treatment in the past seven days.
Three questions skip the boxes. Question three asks whether moderate exercise is a struggle, using 1.6 kilometres walked in 14 minutes or 200 metres swum without resting as the yardstick. Question five asks about surgery in the last 12 months. Question ten asks about prescription medication, with birth control and anti-malarials other than mefloquine as the only exceptions. A yes to any of those three goes straight to a doctor.
What happens once you tick yes?
Page three comes out. It is the examiner's evaluation form, and it carries two tick boxes. Approved means the doctor finds no conditions incompatible with recreational scuba diving or freediving. Not approved means they do. The doctor signs and dates it, prints their credentials and clinic details, and may add a practice stamp.
All three pages travel to the appointment, because the doctor needs to see which line you ticked. What comes back to the dive centre is the result, not the diagnosis. Page three has no space for a condition, a medication list or a history. The form asks for an evaluation when you answer yes to question three, five or ten, or to anything inside a box. Our rule is the shorter version: a yes anywhere means a signed page three before in-water training starts, the pool included.
Who can sign a dive medical in South Africa?
The signature line reads "certified medical doctor or other legally certified medical provider", which leaves the choice wider than most students expect. A GP can sign it. The form then sends the examiner to uhms.org for guidance on how a condition relates to diving. That is where the Diving Medical Guidance document lives.
A doctor with dive medicine training reads those questions the way they were written. DAN Southern Africa runs a Find a Dive Doctor directory for that reason. Handing the form to a doctor who has not seen one before tends to end in a referral regardless.
Does a yes end the course?
Rarely. UHMS sets out the system's goals plainly, and the second of them is to allow as many individuals to dive as reasonably possible. The questionnaire exists to find the people who need an assessment, not to thin the class. Conditions that sound disqualifying in a search result frequently are not.
Asthma is the one students raise most, and how well it is controlled decides the outcome rather than the diagnosis itself. The guide to scuba with asthma sets out what a doctor looks at. Box C catches divers with a history of ear or sinus trouble. That question is about function as much as history, and the guide to equalising your ears covers what function looks like underwater.
One line on the form takes no signature at all. The note to women reads: if you are pregnant, or attempting to become pregnant, do not dive. No physician's approval reopens that one while it applies.
Why read the form before you pay?
Because the answers are cheaper to find early. The questionnaire is linked from every course page on this site, and the same form appears inside the PADI eLearning once a course begins. Ten questions and seven boxes take a few minutes to read and cost nothing.
That timing is what makes the booking terms fair. A course can be cancelled for a refund until the eLearning code is redeemed. After redemption the PADI material has been delivered and the fee stands, so a medical outcome found later sits on the wrong side of that line. The answers that catch people out are the unremarkable ones: turning 46, a blood pressure tablet, sinus surgery two months ago. Read the form, then book the Open Water Diver course. That order costs less.
Sources
- Diver Medical Participant Questionnaire (form 10346), the copy linked from every Scuba Evolution course page: the ten questions, boxes A to G and the examiner's evaluation form.
- UHMS: Recreational Diving Medical Screening System, for the three-part structure, the system's stated goals and the current version dates.
- DAN Southern Africa: Dive Medical Forms, the local download point and the list of bodies that endorse the system.
- DAN: Diseases and Conditions, the condition-by-condition reference behind individual answers.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long is a dive medical valid for?
The questionnaire sets no expiry date. It is completed as a prerequisite to a course, so a new one comes with each enrolment. Many questions carry their own windows of 30 days, six months, 12 months or five years, so the answers age on their own.
Can you fill the form in on the day?
You can, and it works badly if an answer turns out to be yes. A doctor's appointment cannot be arranged from a pool deck. Read the questions when you book.
Does Discover Scuba Diving need the form too?
Yes. The questionnaire is a prerequisite to recreational scuba diving and freediving activity, rather than to certification courses alone. A single pool session is screened the same way a full course is.
Do you have to tell the dive centre what the condition is?
No. Page one is yes or no answers, page two goes to the appointment with you, and page three returns with a tick and a signature. The evaluation form has no field for a diagnosis or a medication.
What happens if the doctor ticks "not approved"?
In-water training cannot go ahead on that form. Some conditions change with treatment or time, and a doctor trained in dive medicine may read a borderline case differently from a general practice. Both of those are conversations for a physician rather than a dive centre.
Which version of the form is current?
The version date is printed at the foot of page one. UHMS lists 2026-01-01 as the current edition of the Participant Questionnaire and Physician's Evaluation Form, and 2023-05-31 for the Diving Medical Guidance. Check that date before printing an old download.
This is general information, not a substitute for a dive medical or advice from a doctor trained in dive medicine. In an emergency, contact your local emergency services and DAN Southern Africa on +27 82 810 6010.
Reviewed September 2026. Devon Ford runs Scuba Evolution, a PADI 5 Star Dive Centre in Glenvista, Johannesburg.
