Revision: Personal Safety & Social Responsibilities (PSSR) — Including the 2026 Violence & Harassment Update

Revision card — STCW Code Table A-VI/1-4, Personal Safety and Social Responsibilities. One of the four mandatory Basic Safety Training (BST) modules every seafarer holds before their first STCW endorsement, alongside Personal Survival Techniques, Fire Prevention & Fire Fighting, and Elementary First Aid. Unlike the other three, PSSR isn't really a skills course — it's the one that covers how you're expected to behave and think on a ship, which makes it easy to under-revise and easy for an examiner or assessor to catch out.

The Core Competence Areas

• Comply with emergency procedures — recognising the types and characteristics of shipboard emergencies (fire, collision, flooding, grounding) and knowing the muster list, alarm signals and your own assigned role without having to be told twice
• Take precautions to prevent pollution of the marine environment — basic awareness of MARPOL, why even small discharges (oil, garbage, sewage) matter, and the vessel's own pollution prevention plans
• Observe safe working practices — permit-to-work basics, PPE, why accident prevention is everyone's job and not just the safety officer's
• Understand orders and be understood — communicating clearly in relation to safety duties, including across a multinational crew where English may be nobody's first language
• Contribute to effective human relationships onboard — social responsibility, working relationships, respecting other crew members' welfare
• Understand and take necessary action to control fatigue — recognising fatigue in yourself and others, and knowing it's a safety issue, not a personal failing

New From 1 January 2026: Violence & Harassment

IMO Resolution MSC.560(108) (adopted 23 May 2024) added a new competence to Table A-VI/1-4 covering the prevention of and response to violence and harassment onboard, explicitly including bullying, sexual harassment and sexual assault (SASH). It applies to training or certificate renewal taking place on or after 1 January 2026 — if you completed PSSR before that date, you are not required to retrain purely because of this change, but any refresher taken from 2026 onwards will include it. This is the first time interpersonal conduct of this kind has been made a mandatory global STCW competence, not just a company policy matter, and it's a natural oral/assessment topic examiners are likely to start probing.

What Examiners and Assessors Actually Probe

• Can you name the four BST modules without hesitating, and explain which one PSSR actually is (the one that isn't survival, fire or first aid)
• Do you understand fatigue as a safety-critical factor, not just tiredness — this ties directly into hours of rest/MLC compliance
• Can you explain, in your own words, why the violence/harassment competence was added — the answer examiners want is about ship safety and culture, not just HR compliance
• Do you know who to report a safety concern, pollution incident, or a violence/harassment concern to onboard, and that reporting routes may differ for each

Quick Self-Check

• What are the four mandatory STCW Basic Safety Training certificates, and which one is PSSR?
• What does MSC.560(108) add to the PSSR syllabus, and from what date does it apply to new training?
• Why is fatigue treated as a PSSR competence rather than just a rest-hours record-keeping issue?

Related Reading

• OOW Revision: Ancillary & Safety Course Certificates — where PSSR sits in the full STCW certificate stack
• STCW Certificate Renewal Guide — what expires, when, and how the 2026 PSSR update affects your next refresher
• Safety Leadership Onboard — the human-relationships side of PSSR in practice, not just the syllabus definition