Wellness at sea: a new conceptual framework for seafarer training

Carl Rogers, in his theory of person-centeredness, explains that a person responds to his or her world as an organised whole (Rogers, 1987:486). This suggests that a person acts as a holistic, multi-dimensional human being to every experience. Rogers also suggests that the response to the phenomenal field is unique to every person because of their ideas, feelings, behaviour, needs, values and physical attributes (Swanepoel & De Beer, 2009:27). How a seafarer experiences life at sea, how he or she reacts to an incident, or how he or she steers a ship are thus related to him or her as an organised whole, a multi-dimensional human being. Training of seafarers has, in the opinion of the author, traditionally been one-dimensional, focusing merely on the 'occupational' aspect of who seafarers are. Competent seafarers have always been defined as people who have good navigational or engineering skills. However, evidence presented highlights that these skills are often lacking in dealing with the realities and complexities of life at sea. The author argues that a new holistic, multi-dimensional conceptual framework is needed to assist seafarers in coping within the 'total institution' (Simonds, 2013:63) of a ship.