Occupational Medicine

In many industrialized countries smokers have been observed in high prevalence among workers with poor educational status, who are usually exposed to major occupational risks. The smoking habit and passive smoking may by themselves, or through interactions with other occupational risk factors, cause the onset of serious diseases. Therefore health reasons and the legal obligation to observe the smoking ban in the workplace make it essential to prevent and combat smoking in the workplace and to promote smoking cessation in workers who smoke. This initiative should benefit not only workers' health and well-being but also company finances. The Occupational Physician should engage in diverse activities ranging from encouraging young people not to start smoking to providing programmes to encourage workers who smoke to abandon the habit. For example, he or she should i) inform managers, supervisors and workers about the high risks linked to smoking, passive smoking and obligations esta...

Job stress is common in health care professionals in the west. Less is known about its prevalence in Middle Eastern countries. To determine job stress, its sources and its effect on health care professionals in northern Jordan. A simple random sample of 101 physician specialists, 126 dentists, 52 general practitioners and 123 pharmacists in northern Jordan completed a socio-demographic questionnaire, the General Health Questionnaire, and addressed structured questions about job stress. Descriptive statistics and multivariate analyses were used to describe and compare participants, and a binary logistic regression was used to identify factors associated with stress and reported health problems. Of the 402 health care professionals, 27% reported high levels of stress. Prevalence was highest among general practitioners (33%), then dentists (30%) and pharmacists (25%). The lowest stress was among physician specialists (12%). Factors associated with the highest stress were being a genera...

Prevalence studies show high levels of burnout, anxiety, fatigue and other symptoms of distress among medical doctors. However, there are very few randomized controlled trials testing interventions against these problems. This randomized controlled trial (NCT02838290; ClinicalTrials.gov, 2016) tested interventions teaching 227 doctors about the psychology of burnout, stress, coping with patient death, and managing distress, as well as giving them information about prevalence rates among doctors. Primary outcomes included burnout, anxiety, insomnia, grief, alcohol/drug use, binge eating, physical symptoms, and psychiatric morbidity. The outcomes were tested before and after the interventions with a 7-day time-lag. The intervention significantly decreased doctors’ levels of burnout (e.g. emotional exhaustion and depersonalization) and anxiety. Doctors in the control group had no significant changes in these signs of distress. The intervention did not significantly reduce other health and habit-related outcomes potentially because these need a longer time-lag than 7 days. Interventions teaching doctors about the psychology of work-related distress reduce burnout and anxiety by helping doctors realize that distress is a normal, human reaction to external stressors, common in medicine, and solvable by learning about psychological coping strategies.

In its early years the British Occupational Hygiene Society was effective as a forum for discussion and publication of innovations in occupational hygiene, but there were few practising comprehensive occupational hygienists.  Many industries saw little need to solve their problems, and the profession grew slowly. From 1967 the British Examining Board in Occupational Hygiene developed qualifications: a Diploma, Certificate, and a suite of specialist Preliminary Certificates.  Improved measurement methods, and a lack of criteria to judge the results, drove BOHS to develop hygiene standards, notably for chrysotile asbestos and wide-band noise.  The Health and Safety at Work Act in 1974, and the establishment of the Health and Safety Executive, hastened a revolution in the field.

Objectives This study aims to assess the prevalence of health problems (eg, insomnia, binge-eating, substance use and ill health) among UK doctors and to investigate whether occupational distress increases the risk of health problems. Design This study reports the analysis of data collected at the baseline stage of a randomised controlled trial (protocol #NCT02838290). setting Doctors were invited through medical Royal Colleges, the British Medical Association's research panel and a random selection of NHS trusts across various UK regions. Participants 417 UK doctors with an equivalent split of gender (48% males) and seniority (49% consultants). Main outcomes and measures Outcomes were sleep problems (eg, insomnia), alcohol/drug use (eg, binge-drinking), ill health (eg, backache) and binge-eating (eg, uncontrollable eating). Predictor variables were occupational distress (psychiatric morbidity, burnout, job effort, work-life imbalance, coping with stress through self-blame or substances) and work factors (workplace and years practising medicine). results 44% of doctors binge-drank and 5% met the criteria for alcohol dependence; 24%-29% experienced negative emotions after overeating and 8% had a binge-eating disorder; 20%-61% had some type of sleep problem and 12% had severe/moderate insomnia; 69% had fatigue and 19%-29% experienced other types of ill health problems. The results show that occupational distress and job factors increase the odds of doctors using substances, having sleep problems, presenting with frequent symptoms of ill health and binge-eating. For example, burnout increased the risk of all types of sleep problems, eg, difficulty falling/staying asleep, insomnia (OR ≥1.344; p≤0.036). Even taking into consideration whether or not a doctor works in a hospital, the risk of health problems still rises when doctors have signs of occupational distress. Conclusion Early recognition of occupational distress can prevent health problems among UK doctors that can reduce the quality of patient care because of sickness-related absence.

Adanya perkembangan ilmu pengetahuan menyatakan bahwa tidur yang adekuat merupakan kebutuhan biologis untuk hidup, hampir sama seperti kebutuhan untuk makan dan minum dimana hal ini merupakan hal yang kritikal untuk kesehatan dan bekerja dengan aman. Lama tidur 7-8 jam semalam dihubungkan dengan rendahnya risiko obesitas, diabetes, hipertensi, infark miokard dan kecelakaan tentang cerebral vaskuler sama baik dengan rendahnya risiko kecelakaan dan kesalahan dalam bekerja.2
Menurut CDC di 2011, warga Amerika semakin bertambah untuk mendapatkan tidur yang adekuat. Pada periode 1985-1990 dan 2004-2007, persentase tenaga kesehatan lama tidur kurang dari 6 jam setiap harinya. Dari semua jenis industri, tenaga kesehatan merupakan urutan kedua dengan jumlah tenaga kerja yang waktu tidurnya pendek.3
Sedangkan di Eropa, satu dari lima pekerja memiliki waktu bergilir termasuk bekerja  malam hari dan satu dari dua puluh pekerja mendapatkan kerja lembur. Sejak tahun 1990, perubahan mendasar diambil ILO (Internatioanl Labour Organisation) tentang waktu kerja dimana pembatasan lama kerja dikarenakan panjang atau tidak normalnya merupakan hazard/bahaya bagi kesehatan

Musculoskeletal disorders such as low back pain can cause a wide spectrum of chronic complications such as quality of life and general health impairment. Mental health is a wide spectrum of concepts that which those such as anxiety, depression or even quality of life had challengeable impacts on work related characters such as worker productivity, absensism. Present study was performed for evaluation of low back pain prevalence and its association with general health and quality of life status among blue workers of Fars ABFA Company. In the present study we focused on low back pain among 451 blue workers and assessed their mental health status and quality of life status with general health questionnaire (GHQ-28) and short form questionnaire (SF-36) respectively. In comparison one-year prevalence of low back pain was 44.2%. Mean of SF36 (63.90 ± 17.39 vs. 79.42 ± 15.01; P≤0.001) and General health subdomains (58.29 ± 19.63vs. 69.84 ± 18.63; P≤0.001) for workers with low back pain were significantly lower than other workers. Findings of our study showed that low back pain had impact on mental health status and quality of life among workers and these changes must consider in the designing preventive program more than control of pain.

Work-related overload syndromes are chiefly associated with the upper limbs, where carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) plays a leading role. This article analyses methods of diagnosing CTS, with special emphasis on those that can be used by physicians in early diagnosis of CTS in workers doing monotonous work. It also discusses occupational (e.g., assembly work, typing, playing instruments, packaging and work associated with the use of a hammer or pruning scissors) and extra-occupational factors (e.g., post-traumatic deformation of bone elements of the carpal tunnel, degenerative and inflammatory changes in tendon sheaths, connective tissue hypertrophy or formation of crystal deposits) leading to CTS; diagnostic methods (subjective symptoms, physical examination and manual provocative tests, vibration perception threshold, electrophysiological examination and imaging methods); and therapeutic and preventive management tools accessible in occupational medicine practice.

This talk is a short summary of the record of #Turkey in terms of 'human cost of economic development', i.e. in the field of workers' health and safety.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACpp0HbCxO0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pATvRl58GY

It tries make sense of a labor reality where at least 20-30 people die each and every day because of work and gives a first insight into the actors and struggles in the field. This talk was held as part of the opening plenary of the yearly conference of Hazards Campaign (http://www.hazardscampaign.org.uk/) in Keele / UK, on the 27th of July, 2018.

The cross-sectional descriptive study aimed at evaluating and studying operational efficiency according to Occupational Health and Environmental Medicine Services (OHEMS) practices standard among Sub-District Health Promoting Hospitals (SHPHs) in the Office of Disease Prevention and Control, Region 10 (ODPC10). The data was collected by using OHEMS practices standard assessment form for 433 SHPHs and quality performance assessment with 8 SHPHs who voluntarily participated in activities. Data were analyzed and interpreted using assessment criteria with descriptive statistics and content analysis. The results found that 51.7% of SHPHs has self-assessed according to OHEMS practices standard, which more than the indicators of the Department of Disease Control is greater than or equal to 30% of SHPHs in the responsibility area. Most of SHPHs self-assessed that does not pass the criteria (76.4%) and passed the starting level to upper 23.6%. The components that did not pass the criteria were component 1: management for support the OHEMS (73.2%), followed by component 5: operations of environmental medicine services (56.6%), respectively. The qualitative performance assessment was found that 6 SHPHs passed the starting level, which passed criteria in component 1: management for support the OHEMS (53.3% - 60.0%), and component 3: proactive services for labors, and who are affected by environmental pollution (50.0% - 61.1%). Therefore, SHPHs should develop the quality of OHEMS practices standard, ODPC and Provincial Public Health Office need to support upgrade the quality of OHEMS practices standard and development of personnel capacity building training continuously.

The issue of participation of Giuseppe Toniolo in the International Association for the legal protection of workers, to the multifaceted nature and complex problems of political, social and cultural rights that it inevitably involved, provides a new view of his thought and action. The reworking of previous acquisitions of Toniolo on the issue of the scientific method, the new problems of definition of a new discipline of time and space in workplaces, its heavy impact on the role of
women in society and in the family and the resulting reorganization cultural gender stereotypes, and the epistemological break constituted by the new occupational health and practice inspection of the factory, are just some of the paths that could draw around the intellectual experience lived by Toniolo as Italian representative within the Association.