Knowledge

Although prevention of incidents leading to evacuations at sea is of vital importance, little is known about its causal patterns and demographic determinants. We investigated therefore relationships between age, occupation and nationality and causes of evacuations. The data were obtained from the Telemedical Assistance Service (TMAS) in Denmark between 2004 and 2014 supplemented with data on all seafarers from the Danish Maritime Authority (N = 73,344). These data included information on broad age groups, occupational position and nationality. The outcomes were evacuations from any cause and in four broad categories of causes leading to evacuations. A total of 403 evacuations were reported in the 11-year study period. 27% of the evacuations were due to external causes, 19% due to diseases of the circulatory system, 14% due diseases of the digestive system and 40% from other or undetermined causes. Age-adjusted all-cause evacuation rates varied between 1.4 and 3.4 incidents per 1000 person-years in 2004–2014 for officers and between 3.3 and 20.2 incidents for non-officers. An elevated risk of evacuations was found among both officers and non-officers aged ≥50 years, compared with those aged 30–49 years with odds ratios of 2.73 (95% confidence intervals 1.66, 4.50) and 2.59 (2.03, 3.31), respectively. The odds ratios for non-officers from non-Danish European Union and from non-European Union countries compared with Danish non-officers were 1.51 (1.12, 2.04) and 0.55 (0.42, 0.71), respectively. In conclusion, working as non-officer, older age and non-Danish EU nationality were associated with a higher risk of evacuations irrespective of the cause leading to evacuation.

Containerfartens historiske udvikling bliver i litteraturen beskrevet som en revolution og en transformation af den internationale shippingbranche. De teknologiske og organisatoriske forandringer af livet til søs som fulgte med containerfarten har tilsvarende medført en forandring af maritime kulturer og en udfordring af de søfarendes identiteter.
Denne afhandling handler om danske containersøfolks erindringer, fortidsbrug og identitetskonstruktioner og undersøger, hvordan søfolkene fortæller sig selv i relation til deres levede erfaringer i containerfarten. Jeg analyserer i afhandlingen søfolkenes retrospektive fortidsfortolkninger som en måde at nærme mig en forståelse af de forandrede sømandsidentiteter.
Analytisk anlægger afhandlingen et subjektperspektiv, som anser fortiden for nærværende og åben i de mundtlige fortællingers fortolkninger og meningsforhandlinger af fortidens erfaringer. Jeg anskuer den narrative konstruktion af den personlige, autobiografiske, historie som identitetsdannende fortidsbrug, der udtrykker fortællerens subjektivitet. Med en erindringshistorisk tilgang til søfolkenes mundtlige fortællinger undersøger jeg, hvordan vi mennesker forstår os selv gennem de historier, vi fortæller om os selv.
Afhandlingen bygger empirisk på en række dybdegående oral history interviews med danske søfolk, der alle har erfaring inden for den internationale containerfart.
I afhandlingens analyser, viser jeg, hvordan søfolkene retfærdiggør og legitimerer deres valg om i første omgang at blive søfolk og senere at arbejde ombord på containerskibe. Jeg viser, hvordan søfolkene narrativt forhandler forskellige former for erfaret meningstab og aktivt tilskriver arbejdet og fællesskabet ombord på skibene en ny og brugbar mening. Jeg viser samtidig, hvordan den personlige historie konstrueres i dialog med kulturelt dominerende forestillinger og fortællinger. Sådanne forestillinger og fortællinger tilbyder den enkelte fortæller et tilgængeligt sprog at udtrykke sine personlige erfaringer i, men kan også virke begrænsende, hvis fortællerens erfaringer og forståelser ikke passer ind i de dominerende billeder. I sådanne tilfælde kan der opstå, hvad afhandlingen kalder en form for narrativt ubehag (discomposure), der kommer til udtryk som frustration og brud i fortællingens narrative sammenhæng.
Som en gennemgående metodisk pointe viser afhandlingen, hvordan interviewets intersubjektivitet er med til at forme den historie, som fortælles. Det personlige møde mellem fortæller og historiker og interviewets kulturelle kontekster indvirker på forskellig vis på den konstruerede historie. Fremfor at hævde en neutral og objektiv interviewsituation, tager afhandlingen i stedet konsekvensen af denne intersubjektivitet og skriver det konkrete møde mellem søfolkene som fortællere og mig som interviewer ind som en integreret del af den historiske fremstilling. Dette er både et narrativt greb og et metodisk valg, der skal sikre transparens ved at give læseren indblik i, hvordan historierne og mine tolkninger er blevet til.
Afhandlingen yder med sin tilgang og sine analyser flere bidrag til den eksisterende litteratur. Gennem de personlige fortællinger får vi større indsigt i søfolkenes levede liv og deres erfaringer med containerfartens historiske udvikling. Afhandlingen giver et menneskeligt perspektiv på historien om den internationale containerfart, der bidrager til vores viden om udviklingens identitetsmæssige betydning for de mænd og kvinder, som gennemlevede de historiske forandringer ude ombord på skibene.
Afhandlingen er en virksomhedshistorie, der tager oral history alvorligt både som forskningsfelt, metode og genre. Afhandlingen bidrager med sin erindringshistoriske tilgang til oral history til den fornyede samtale mellem forskningsfelterne oral history og virksomhedshistorie. Afhandlingen bringer metodiske og teoretiske indsigter fra den erindringshistoriske tradition ind i virksomhedshistorie og viser gennem sin egen narrative stil potentialet i en historieformidling, der sætter subjektivitet og erindring i centrum af sin analyse. Dermed bidrager afhandlingen også til den narrative vending inden for virksomhedshistorie ved ikke kun at anlægge et narrativt blik på de danske søfolks fortællinger men ved også at tage sig selv alvorligt som narrativ konstruktion.

In this webinar, Adrienne Mannov from Aarhus University and Peter Aske Svendsen from NFA presented their research on autonomous shipping as this relates to seafaring and technology, based on their 2019 report, “Transport 2040: Autonomous ships: A new paradigm for Norwegian shipping - Technology and transformation”.

The event was organized in collaboration with MARLOG

Piracy has unfortunately become a health and safety risk for seafarers in the maritime industry today. However, little do we know about the impact of a pirate hijacking situation and how seafarers cope. Focusing on negotiation communication, the analysis debouches in a discussion of the dynamics of coping strategies, by investigating 173 authentic audio recordings of communication sequences recorded during a pirate hijacking situation that were donated voluntarily by a shipping company. The Captain assessed and reflected on the course of events in the situation, to which the negotiator responded appropriately, with acknowledging brief responses or psychological aid. This is similar to other highly dynamic decision-making settings, where decision-makers tend to continuously reflect and revise their view of the situation (Eraut 2000). The data is also consistent with the “reflection-in-action” concept by Schön (1983) used by van den Heuvel et al. (Cogn Technol Work 16: 25–45, 2014) in their investigation of communication of police officers in hostage situations. However, the coping dynamics changed when the negotiator’s responses became too minimal. This shows how the context and the individual’s cognitive appraisal of the encounter co-shapes the coping dynamics in the situation. It is urged that pre-piracy care and seafarer training involves practical examples and information about roles and coping dynamics in negotiation communication as part of an orchestrated approach to the scourge of piracy.

Aims and objectives: Seagoing employees must undergo medical examinations every second year. Even though International Organisations issued guidelines for these pre-employment medical examinations there is a lack of an internationally accepted continuous training programme for the maritime doctors who perform these examinations. The aim of this survey was to examine the Danish maritime doctors perceived training needs as part of a planned comprehensive maritime occupational health prevention programme.

Methods: A questionnaire based on international standards was distributed to all the maritime doctors (110) electronically in May 2017. The completed questionnaires were 46.4%. STATA was used for the statistical analysis of the data and correlations among the self-rated needs as dependent variables and the doctors characteristics were performed with Fisher exact test, with significance level at α=0.05%.

Results: The maritime doctors considered very important to receive training in “Fitness evaluation and medical examinations guidelines” (76.47%) followed by “Rules and regulations within maritime medicine” (68.63%) and “Working conditions and health risks on board” (62.75%). The number of examinations influenced their preference with those with more than 20 patients to express a more pressing need for training. Age, gender and years of practice did not have any influence in their self-rated needs. Furthermore, they pointed out flexible ways of training including distance learning and
the establishment of a webpage by the respective Authorities as one stop-shop.

Conclusion: Maritime doctors are in favour of continuous education and training. The survey may help the respective Authorities to organise such short courses on targeted topics in the country.

Background: Limited access to medical care can be considered as an occupational risk of seafaring and it may predispose to developing community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) requiring hospital care. We sought to investigate the risk for CAP and other lower respiratory tract infections (LRTI) requiring hospital care among seafarers. We examined the length of hospital stay (LOS) as a proxy for severity of illness. Methods: The study population in this panel data analysis were all seafarers and a 20% random sample of economically active individuals aged 18–65 years who were residing in Denmark in 1997–2016, constituting more than 11 million person-years of follow-up. Annually-registered socio-demographic and work characteristics were linked to data on cause of hospital admissions. We used fixed-effects and zero-truncated Poisson regression to estimate the rate ratios of hospitalization for CAP and other LRTI, and compared LOS across the two populations. Results: The adjusted incident rate ratio (IRR) for CAP in seafarers compared to the economically active population was 1.42 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.15–1.77), whereas the IRR was 0.73 (95% CI: 0.38–1.42) for other LRTI. For LOS, the IRRs for CAP and other LRTI in seafarers were 1.08 (95% CI: 1.04–1.12) and 0.92 (95% CI: 0.83–1.01), respectively. Conclusions: Our findings indicate that seafaring was associated with an increased risk for CAP requiring hospital care. Limited access to health care may be an important contributing factor.

The Nordic countries are ranked among the most gender equal countries worldwide. Equality, political, and civil rights, leading to the high participation of women in the workforce, have paved the way for this egalitarian view. However, women remain the minority in managerial positions in general, and they are also strongly underrepresented in many male‐dominated sectors of the blue economy. The aim of this article is to introduce and discuss gender equality in the blue economy, and to assess the status of gender research in the Nordic context. To achieve this, a purposive interdisciplinary literature review resulted in three encompassing themes on how women’s participation is hindered, overlooked, and undervalued. Using these themes as an analytical lens, we propose that the underlying mechanisms are similar within fisheries, aquaculture, and maritime transportation in how they affect women’s participation. Still, there is a lack of statistics and research within parts of the blue sector. To move forward, there needs to be a shift in focus from policy to practice. One starting point could be to implement current knowledge, e.g., regarding workplace design and tailoring equipment to fit a diverse workforce. We call for scaling up best practices and evaluating policy performance and effectiveness. These are prerequisites for sustainable recruitment and retention of the blue sector workforce and the only way forward for countries aspiring to be truly gender equal.

Background: Fishing is a risky occupation as injuries and fatalities in fishing vessels are quite common. This paper investigates the pattern of injuries aboard fishing vessels in Denmark to get a better understanding of areas where further action is needed to reduce the number of injuries and fatalities in Danish fishing vessels. Materials and methods: Data for this study, extracted from the Danish Fishermen’s Occupational Health Service’s database (in the period 1998–2012) and the Danish Maritime Authority’s accident report from 2013 to 2016, include 1840 injuries in Danish fisheries. Result: The results showed decreased injuries in the study period from 45 injuries and deaths per 1000 fishermen reported to the authorities to 12 injuries and deaths per 1000 fishermen in 2016: 2.1% (n = 39) of all reported injuries in the study period resulted in the death of a fisherman and the remaining injuries resulted in sick leave of more than one day; 52.5% (n = 600) of reported injuries involved fishermen who have less than one year’s experience of employment; 29% (n = 407) of injuries took place between 12:00 and 16:00, and the second largest number of injuries, 23.3% (n = 324), took place between 8:00 and 12:00. The incident rate of slip/fall injuries has decreased from 10.06 per 1000 fishermen in 1998 to 3.84 in 2016. The incidence rate of injuries caused by crushing also decreased, from 9.32 accidents per 1000 fishermen in 1998 to 2.56 in 2016. Most of the injuries, 74.5% (n = 1307), happened on the deck of the vessel. Sprain/strain was among the most common injuries (34.2%; n = 538) followed by fracture (24.8%; n = 391). Conclusion: This study indicated that the number of injuries had been gradually decreasing in Danish commercial fishing vessels in the period from 1998 to 2016. The rate of injuries had been declining due to several initiatives such as the establishment of The Danish Fishermen’s Occupational Health Services, training, safety campaigns, technological improvement and structural changes in fisheries management. However, there are still places for improvement.

Background
The aim of the study was to examine occupational accidents reported from non-passenger merchant ships registered in the Danish International Ship Register in 2010-2012, with a focus on analysing nationality differences in the risk of getting injured in an accident.

Methods
Data about notified occupational accidents were collected from notifications sent to the Danish Maritime Authority and from records of contact with Danish Radio Medical. Events were matched by personal identification and accident data to create a unified database. Stratified cumulative time spent on board by seafarers was used to calculate accident rates. Incidence rates of different nationalities were compared by Poisson regression.

Results
Western European seafarers had an overall accident rate of 17.5 per 100000 person-days, which proved to be significantly higher than that of Eastern European, South East Asian and Indian seaman (adjusted incidence rate ratio 0.53, 0.51 and 0.74, respectively), although differences decreased over the investigated period. Smaller but in most cases still significant discrepancies were observed for serious injuries. The back injury rate of Western European employees was found especially high, while eye injuries seem to be more frequent among South East Asian workers.

Conclusions
The study identified substantial differences between nationalities in the rate of various accidents reported from merchant ships sailing under the Danish flag. The differences may be attributed to various factors such as safety behaviour. Investigation of special injury types and characterisation of effective elements of safety culture can contribute to the improvement of workplace safety in the maritime sector

Background: Evidence on workplace safety and health promotion interventions shows that the interventions have failed to demonstrate substantial benefits for seafarers. It is therefore important to explore what is the evidence of interventions with empowering elements regarding seafarers’ safety and health. This study aims to examine what is known about health promotion interventions in a maritime setting and whether they include an empowerment perspective. And secondly, what were the effects of these efforts. Methods: We systematically searched PubMed and NLM Gateway (for MEDLINE), Institute of Scientific Information/Web of Science (ISI/WOS), and SCOPUS up to July 2022 by using standard keywords including empowerment in the maritime setting. Data extraction was done by three independent reviewers. The quality of included studies was assessed by using the critical appraisal checklists from Joanna Briggs institute. Results: From 3313 studies initially identified, 10 articles met the inclusion criteria and were included in this review. Interventions covered a wide range of topics such as educational interventions on safety, first aid training, weight management, healthy eating, sexual harassment, alcohol abuse, and cancer prevention training. None of the studies applied a specific theory or definitions of empowerment even though their aim was to increase seafarers’ empowerment in these areas. Conclusion: The studies focused on improving the safety and health status of the seafarers, however, they had no explicit focus on participation and empowerment. Increasing research with an empowerment approach in maritime sector is recommended to enhance the feasibility and success of the programs in this hard-to-reach occupation. Systematic review registration number in PROSPERO: CRD42021260098.