Objective: To promote the physical and mental health of employees in a maritime setting and provide knowledge and tools to assist seafarers in managing daily challenges.
Materials and methods: The intervention drew on a goal-based approach, including workshops, coaching,health checks, interviews, and questionnaires.
Results: A process evaluation was used to explore intervention challenges and barriers. Results show that an intervention at sea is complex and needs flexibility. Findings varied, and the main challenges were low participation in one group and lack of continuity due to Covid-19. Data showed a significant positive shift in how the crew rated perceived stress and a statistically significant increase in intake of salad, fish, and vegetarian food.
Conclusions: Workplace interventions in poor health status settings are complex, necessary, and possible, and management’s participation is crucial. Increased awareness was achieved. Learning outcomes: The results showed some positive changes, such as lower stress levels and more intake of salad, fish, and vegetarian food. Flexibility is important for workplace interventions. Work place interventions contribute to health and wellbeing with appropriate management support.
Background: The provision of healthcare for seafarers is challenging due to their isolated working conditions and limited access to healthcare. Telemedical maritime assistance relies on pre-stocked medical chests aboard vessels. However, the contents of these medical chests are not globally standardized, and current data on prescription patterns is limited.
Material and methods: A retrospective observational cohort study was conducted, analyzing medical records from ships that received telemedical assistance between 2021 and 2023. Data were obtained from medical reports submitted by onboard medical officers and an internal medical record registry.
Results: In total, 9,458 individual patients received medical assistance, and 11,698 medications were prescribed. The mean patient age was 38.7 years (range 0–91 years), and patients aged 30–49 years were the most likely to receive medication. Merchant ships were the most common type of vessel requiring medical assistance, and they also had the highest probability for drug prescriptions. Approximately 80% of patients were prescribed medications, and patients required on average 1.24 prescriptions (range 0–6). A total of 266 individual types of medication were available for prescription. Overall, patient demographics and prescription patterns did not change over the three-year period.
Conclusions: The prescription patterns in the treatment of acutely ill seafarers are highly variable due to excessive availability of different drugs. The rare use of certain medications suggests potential inefficiencies in the stock management of medical chests, warranting further evaluation. These findings underscore the need for standardizing medical chests based on a data-driven approach. Medication use in telemedical care of seafarers is frequent but highly variable. A data-driven standardization of medical chests may improve efficiency and ensure availability of essential drugs.