After an Emergency - Handling Bodies of Deceased Human Beings

Emergencies and disasters at sea can lead to the loss of human life. When that happens, and if no assistance from the outside has arrived, crews may have to transport deceased colleagues or passengers to holding areas on the vessel in the form of freezers. Unfortunately, minimising the negative impact on crew members, who are engaged in handling deceased human beings is a vastly overlooked issue in the wake of major incidents.

Here, you will gain basic, yet important, knowledge about which measures to put in place in order to minimise the negative impact on crew members who are engaged in handling bodies of deceased human beings.

We will operate with the phases ‘before’, ‘during’ and ‘after’.

By the end of the short course, you should be able to do the following when using your new knowledge and insight: consider possible and appropriate actions in relation to the aftermath of extremely stressful situations in relation to your crew and take reflexive position to the implications of handling bodies of deceased human beings in relation to you own function on board.

Course author

Doulgerof & Lamberg ApS

We offer high quality psychological services aimed at operational environments – and we work with operative individuals, high performance teams and organisations. We are based in Denmark, and operate on all Continents. Examples of our services are: creation of specialised assessment and training programmes, assessment and training of operational leadership, assessment of suitability for promotion, integrated Technical and Human Factors assessment and training, team-building and team-training, crisis management training, and emergency response operations. We are all occupational and organisational psychologists with clinical backgrounds, and we have considerable experience in navigating in human and organisational complexity. Some of us also have backgrounds as military officers, as well as maritime and civilian leaders.

See full profile