Safety aboard - Care, Health & First Aid

While being careful and avoiding accidents is a natural instinct for us, doing so aboard is of even more importance as the distance in miles and hours to the nearest caregiver is always longer than ashore. What complicates matters on a boat is that the environment itself makes being careful difficult. First of all, the boat itself is constantly moving around - sometimes at extreme angles and accelerations. Secondly, the more the boat is rocking and rolling around you, the more likely it is that you are going to have to go and do something active, which increases the chances of something going awry. No matter how well-designed, a boat is a myriad of sharp corners and edges, oddly shaped object and protuberances that all seem to want to do nothing else than snag parts of your body. So far, on Zanshin I I've broken a little, a middle toe (both times while running forward during the anchoring process) and almost lost a finger (to a spring-loaded spinnaker pole attachment) and consider myself to be lucky that nothing worse happened. Since most sicknesses are bacteria/virus borne and often have human carriers, sailors are less likely to contract them - living away from densely populated urban centers. We won't catch anything offshore that we didn't already bring with us and most likely started incubating before departing the last port. While it is important to pay attention to hygiene aboard in order to avoid bacteria to get a foothold, the major concern, in my opinion, is to attempt to prevent and avoid accidents.
While I haven't found the reference, I've heard that the major cause of accidents aboard a sailboat is the galley. Be it open flames or scalding water, the galley has plenty of potential to do damage and the recommendation for galley cooks to wear thick clothing (oilskins or the like) while working in weather is understandable, but not necessarily practicable, particularly in tropical climes.
With the advent of proximate first aid in urban areas most of us have little or no knowledge of first-aid measures. Both initial and advanced first-aid courses teach measures and methods to provide initial care and patient stabilization until professionals arrive. Getting training that goes beyond this basic set of skills is difficult to find as the target audience is quite small, so far I have seen classes for sailors and for wilderness guides as both groups need to ensure that the injured person is not only given initial aid but then stabilized for a lengthy transport (or period of time) and potentially the measures need to last indefinitely. So while a first-responder course teaches how to stop a bad cut from bleeding , the advanced class needs to augment that skill with the ability to change the dressings or, if necessary, to suture the wound.
I've had a number of first-aid courses of varying levels but I'm still looking for a good advanced course, to date the only ones I've found have been either too far away or at a time where I couldn't attend.

There are a number of excellent books available in both electronic and print form which I consider to be indispensable aboard any boat more then 30 minutes from primary health care. I've listed them below: