Monika Petra Puskeppeleit (born 1955) is a German physician, public health manager and scientific researcher with special interest in medicine of remote areas, especially polar regions. She is the first German medical doctor and station leader of the first all-woman team to overwinter in Antarctica.
Early life and education
Puskeppeleit was born April 4, 1955, her father was a construction engineer, her mother a ballet dancer. Since her early childhood Puskeppeleit was fascinated by the Norwegian polar explorer Fridtjof Nansen. She spent her school days in Frankfurt am Main and Mannheim, where she graduated in 1974 from the humanistically oriented Johann-Sebastian-Bach-Gymnasium, with a focus on natural sciences. In the early eighties Puskeppeleit decided to overwinter as female expedition doctor in the Antarctic and gave first scientific lectures on polar medicine in 1986. She studied medicine at the Johann Wolfgang von Goethe University of Frankfurt, as well as at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität medical university of Heidelberg, Germany from 1982 to 1984. This was followed by a diploma of tropical medicine from the Berhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine (Hamburg, Germany) in 2003. In 2005, she began a Masters program and obtained a Master of Public Health (MPH) in Public Health Management from the Nordic School of Public Health (Gothenborg, Sweden) in 2008.
The title of her MSc dissertation was ‘Improving telemedicine onboard Norwegian ships and drilling platforms – A study of intersectoral co-operation in Maritime Medicine’. She is also certified in travel and emergency medicine, with OLF certification as seamen's, ship's, and offshore physician. She is fluent in German, her mother tongue, while also being proficient in English, French, Norwegian, Swedish and Basic Italian.
Career and impact
Since 1984 she is a qualified medical doctor with a doctorate in surgery from the Medical School, Heidelberg University (Ph.D.1991). Puskeppeleit is a specialist in general practice and occupational health medicine, certified in emergency medicine, medical quality management, travel and tropical medicine, as well as seamen's, ship's, offshore and expedition physician, with many years of international hands-on medical experience working in both Polar Regions, as well as in Australia, Central Asia, Europe, India and in West - and South Africa. Her research interests focus on maritime and offshore telemedicine, cruise ship medicine, maritime education issues, inter- sectorial healthcare management, lifestyle epidemiology, occupational health, medical quality management, and the education of international ship's doctors. Puskeppeleit's Masters dissertation has contributed to today's understanding and standardization of maritime medicine and has contributed to the Textbook of Maritime Medicine, a comprehensive volume to maritime medicine free of charge from the Norwegian Centre for Maritime Medicine.
Puskeppeleit has volunteered as a coordinator and medical physician at HUMEDICA, an international NGO providing healthcare across the globe, worked as an offshore physician in 2012 at Statoil in Bergen (Norway). Puskeppeleit has contributed towards short-courses on maritime medicine with the goal of addressing the shortage of maritime physicians. The Compact Course Maritime Medicine of the German Schiffarztbörse [Medical Ship Management] and Expeditionsarztbörse provides essential information on maritime medicine within a 40-hour format. She has lectured and published on polar and maritime medicine since 1986, also contributing to a number of books and textbooks. Puskeppeleit is a current member of the German Society of Polar Research (DGP), German Institute for Aero and Space Medicine (DLR), International Maritime Health Association (IMHA), German Society for Tropical Medicine and International Health DTG .