Background: Medical emergencies on board are seriously impairing seafarers' safety and health, as well as future work prospects. The purpose of this International Maritime Health Foundation's (IMHF) initiative was to establish common principles for the management of disease and injury by non-medical professionals at sea.
Materials and methods: Nine expert participants actively participated in the workshop in order to identify common principles that should guide the future development of treatment pathways by evaluating selected treatment pathways from The Ship Captain's Medical Guide 23rd Edition in the context of medical intervention on board merchant ships and consensus statements from previous four IMHF EP Workshops on Medical Help on Board. Delphi study survey and a modified RAND-UCLA Appropriateness Method (RAM) were used in the process of reaching the consensus.
Results: The result of the workshop is a set of consensus statements on the general principles of development of the future treatment pathways, Results reflect the need for further tuning of the existent treatment pathways or creating new ones, considering their development in the digital format.
Keywords: medical help onboard; seafarers; treatment pathways.