Today’s article is about the seafarers’ medical certificate.
Since I finished my degree last week, now I must take care of some paperwork in order to embark on my next journey.
One of the certificates we must have is the medical certificate.
Usually it’s the company that hires you that specifies which medical exams they want. In my case, as I still don’t have a ship in sight for my internship, I did the general exams that are requested to do the maritime certificate of competency.
Which kind of exams were required for the medical certificate:
• Eyesight tests
• Hearing tests
• Illicit substances test
• Blood analyses
• Electrocardiography (ECG)
Vision tests:
In this test they will test your general vision, peripheric vision and if you can distinguish colors.
Hearing Tests:
In this test they put headphones in your ears and produce several blips, to see which decibels you can hear.
With this test I found I have perfect hearing, osince I didn’t miss any blip.
Illicit substances test:
In this test, they make you take a urine test to see if you consume any illicit substance.
They also test for sleeping or depression pills.
Blood analyses:
They do several blood analyses to see your general health.
Electrocardiography (ECG):
This exam records the electrical activity of our heart over a period using electrodes placed on the skin.
These electrodes detect electrical changes on the skin produced by our heart muscle’s electrophysiologic pattern of depolarization during each heartbeat.
After you run this test, a cardiologist will analyze it to see if you have any cardiac problem.
End of the tests:
At the end of all these tests, you will see a general practice doctor and she/he will ask you some questions about your medical history.
As I’m a sports girl, it wasn’t the first time I did any of these tests, so I wasn’t worried at all.
If you have any doubt, leave them on the comments! ????