PRE-EMPLOYMENT - HEALTH-SCREENING CHECKUP
Seafarers should have a good pre-employment and disease/health screening medical examination before joining ships. This is not only to ensure that they are suitable for the job designated but only to discover any on-going illness or underlying illnesses that would complicate during the course of the employment. This can be life-saving for the seafarer himself. For the owners / crewing agents it is to ensure that they are employing one who is already sick. It is so costly to replace and to treat a seafarer in a foreign land, sometimes involving replacement and repatriation costs. As such such medical examination should be performed by those who are familiar with the different guidelines as set up by the different maritime authorities. If the examination is properly conducted the seafarer would seldom report sick and a lot of problems can be avoided. One important aspect of health which is not well assessed among seafarers is their pscyhological profile and job suitability. Job-misplacement and manifestations of hidden psychological and even psychiatric disorders occur while their are working on the ships. See my other sections on this matter.
DISEASES SCREENING CHECKUP
In screening for illnesses in seafarers, time is the essence and diagnosis has has to be made rapidly and accurately in order that strong definite decision for management can be implimented without repoach and error. This very strict requirement to not allow much error and oftentimes we have to make the decision on the first visit when we see the patient for the first time. As such it requires experience with the maritime medicine and familiarity of the ship working environment in order to formulate the final disposition.
