Crew and welfare · Module 15
The ship’s medicine chest
The chest, the controlled-drugs control book, treatments given and the annual expert inspection.
FOR-2001-03-09-439
What it is for
The requirement, and the problem
The medicine chest is a small module with an unusually sharp edge: it holds controlled drugs, and the control book for them is a legal record that is checked, physically, against the bottles, at least once a year. A discrepancy between the two is a serious matter for the master personally.
So the controlled-drugs ledger here is append-only, requires a second signature, and cannot be reconciled by editing history. Everything else in the module — stock, expiry, treatments — is ordinary, and deliberately so.
How it works
Three steps, on board and ashore
- 1
Know the chest
Stock by item, batch and expiry, against what the chest’s category and trade area require it to carry.
- 2
Controlled drugs, kept straight
The control book has no edit path. Every movement is a signed entry, and a recalled batch is taken out of use and landed.
- 3
Treatments and the annual check
Treatments are recorded against the person, and the yearly inspection is planned, carried out and signed.
Example with demo data
What it looks like
A working picture of the module with demo data from the Ocean Pioneer — the same ship you find in the demo.
Try the demo — no account, in your browser, with the PIN 1234.
- The chest — stock, expiry, what runs out first
- Controlled drugs — the control book, append-only
- Treatments — what was given and to whom
- Checks — the expert inspection and its findings
In detail
What the module does
An append-only control book
Every withdrawal of a controlled drug is an entry that cannot be edited or deleted, with the quantity, the patient, the prescriber and a second signature.
Stock with expiry, sorted by what runs out first
The chest screen leads with what expires soonest, because that is the only ordering that changes what anybody does today.
Treatments recorded against the person
What was given, to whom, when, by whom and why — kept with the same access rules as everything else medical, which is to say tightly.
The 12-month expert inspection
The inspection is a record with its findings, its date and its inspector, and the next one is computed from it.
Reconciliation that shows a difference rather than hiding it
When the count does not match the book, the product records a discrepancy. It does not let the book be adjusted to match the shelf.
Access that is genuinely restricted
Medical records are not visible to whoever has an officer role. The permission is separate and narrow, and the product checks it rather than a rank.
The decision
Append-only is not a preference
Three registers in this product cannot be edited after the fact: the Oil Record Book, the controlled-drugs control book, and the rest-hour record chain. All three are places where the ability to edit is itself the risk, and in all three the product has no edit path at all rather than a permission nobody is given.
That distinction matters when somebody asks how it is enforced, because "we do not grant that permission" is a policy and "the code cannot express it" is a guarantee.
Works with
One product, not nineteen
Crew and certificates
Who is on board, what each position must hold, and which certificate expires before the crew change.
FOR-2011-12-22-1523Purchasing
Requisition to receipt, on the shipowner’s own thresholds, where nobody approves their own commitment.
The shipowner’s own policyChecklists
The daily, weekly and monthly checks on board, with versioned wording and no duplicated occurrence when two devices are offline.
ISM Code, clause 7
Put one vessel on it for two months
No card and no implementation project. A company adds its own vessel and its own people on its own afternoon — and if it is not for you, you stop, with your data exported first.