• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.363-371
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• 2016

Background: Seafaring is an inherently stressful environment. Because working time and leisure time is spent in the same confined environment for a prolonged period of time, many stressors present in seafaring can also be conceived of as chronic. We explored the effects of duration at sea, seafaring experience, environmental stressors, and psychological capital (PsyCap) on the sleep quality and fatigue of seafarers. PsyCap is a construct that draws upon ideas from positive psychology and positive organizational behavior, and is intended to capture an individual's psychological capacities that can be developed and utilized for performance improvements. Methods: We collected survey data from a sample of seafarers working in the offshore re-supply industry (n = 402) and a sample of seafarers working on board combined passenger and cargo ships (n = 340). Results: PsyCap emerged as a robust predictor with statistically significant relations to fatigue and sleep quality in both samples. PsyCap also interacted with duration at sea in explaining fatigue in seafarers working on board the passenger and cargo ships. Seafarers on passenger and cargo ships also reported significantly higher levels of fatigue than those working in the offshore re-supply industry. Conclusion: Coupled with emerging research showing that PsyCap is trainable, our results suggest that maritime organizations could have much to gain by being cognizant of and developing routines for continually developing the PsyCap of their employees.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Environment & Safety
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.433-440
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• 2019

Offshore working environments such as ships, offshore oil and gas plants, and offshore wind turbines are isolated and directly exposed to rough seas, which pose high risks of safety accidents. Therefore, all workers in offshore plants should be able to cope with emergency situations and must be qualified according to relevant laws and regulations such as the International Convention on Standards of Training, Certification and Watchkeeping for Seafarers (STCW Convention) and Offshore Petroleum Industry Training Organization (OPITO) standards. In particular, marine workers should be able to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) in isolated locations or enclosed and confined spaces such as those in life-boats, life-rafts, rescue-boats, etc. Because the floor material is made of rubber, it may be difficult to perform chest compressions in life-rafts used to escape from emergency situations in ships or offshore plants. Chest compressions performed on life-rafts may reduce the accuracy of CPR and increase fatigue for those providing aid. To measure the accuracy and fatigue of those performing CPR in life-rafts, 15 experimenters with more than five years of experience as first aid instructors were exposed to different CPR environments in a marine safety training center equipped with an artificial wave generator. The results showed that the accuracy of CPR in the classroom was 99.6 %, but that in various life-raft environments was only 84 %. T-verification of the two sites confirmed the reduced accuracy of CPR performed on life-rafts. CPR on life-rafts should be performed in groups of two and with the use of automated chest compression devices.