In August SAN’s Danish sister organisation, Seahealth, held its annual conference in Nyborg. And just as the previous year, the 2014 conference was fantastic. The theme was leadership and there was a wide variety of exciting and interesting lectures to choose between. The conference was opened by Rasmus Dahlberg, who spoke about human factors in accidents, and we could choose any of the lectures that followed.
I chose to go to the talk entitled, ”We have created a good safety culture”. Søren Bøge Pedersen, senior work environment consultant at Seahealth, held a workshop on how to develop a good safety culture and how Søfartsstyrelsen (the Danish equivalent of the Swedish Transport Agency) promotes this through its supervision.
Another lecture I listened to was ”Are there taboos at sea?” about what happens when drugs take over control – about their effects on the brain, syringes and drugs. The lecturer was Henrik Rindom, senior consultant in psychiatry at Stofrådgivningen, who described in a very interesting manner how difficult it can be to determine whether a person is under the influence of drugs and how easy it is to make some drugs at home in the kitchen.
Another lecture I listened to was ”Bullying and harassment”. Tim Springett, manager of Employment and Legal, UK Chamber of Shipping, spoke about bullying and discrimination at sea. He used material that ETF/ITF and the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA) have developed. The material, consisting of videos and text, is available in all the EU languages and is free to use.