Cruise ship doctor: demands and challenges versus qualifications and training.

Medical practice during a world cruise: a descriptive epidemiological study of injury and illness among passengers and crew.

STUDY OBJECTIVE To describe the medical practice of one physician and two nurses during a 106-day westward cruise from Los Angeles to New York in 2004 with an average of 464 passengers (51% women) and 615 crew (22% women) aboard. METHODS Patient data were registered continuously and reviewed after the voyage. RESULTS There were 4244 recorded patient contacts (=40 per day), 2866 of which dir...

Underperformance of Reverse-Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction in Japan and Potential Implications From Diamond Princess Cruise Ship and Other Countries During the Ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic

Shipshape: sanitation inspections on cruise ships, 1990-2005, Vessel Sanitation Program, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In the course of a successful collaboration between the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the cruise ship industry on reducing common-source outbreaks, CDC's Vessel Sanitation Program (VSP) has expanded its training, education, and cruise ship inspection programs. The study reported here evaluated 15 years of ship sanitation inspection data from the National Center for Enviro...

Qualification of ship doctors: a German approach.

BACKGROUND While a steady growth of cruise tourism since the 1970s created an increasing demand for ship doctors medical postgraduate specialty training did not sufficiently reflect the scope of skills and knowledge required from a physician being left to himself at sea. The German Maritime Health Association therefore tasked a working group with analysing the situation and coming up with sugge...

Legal aspects of cruise medicine - can a non-US ship's doctor be sued for malpractice in Florida?

An English ship's doctor treated a non-US female patient for abdominal discomfort on a foreign-flagged cruise ship off the coast of Haiti. In Mexico the patient underwent abdominal surgery, followed by complications, for which her lawyers wanted to take the ship's doctor to court in Florida, USA. A trial court granted their wish, but this decision was reversed on appeal as the factors discussed...