Health Safety Environment
Occupational medicine deals with the interactions between work and health. One focus is on maintaining health in terms of professional performance, another on avoiding occupational diseases or their treatment. Occupational doctors are classic occupational physicians, but there is also intensive research in the field.
Tasks in occupational medicine
Occupational physicians diagnose work-related damage to health, which can also be caused by the (material) working environment. They also develop methods to prevent occupational diseases from developing. Based on the findings of occupational medicine, physicians develop requirements for the modern professional environment in cooperation with companies, authorities and legislators. All occupational health and safety regulations that exist today were proposed by and/or developed in collaboration with occupational physicians over the past decades and centuries. For this reason, workplaces today are largely ergonomically designed and free from harmful environmental influences, although there is always room for improvement. Another essential task of occupational physicians is the integration of chronically ill and disabled people into the work process. Job assistants can serve this purpose (a personal assistant at the workplace who accompanies a disabled person), and occupational physicians also work closely with social physicians and representatives of occupational and organizational psychology. Accident prevention is naturally a priority in occupational medicine, and company doctors also have to deal with insurance medical and insurance law issues. All in all, integrated medical care without occupational medicine is unthinkable. The focal points of the subject area can be concluded as:
In the self-image of occupational physicians, they advise working people, this dialogue is considered essential ("talking medicine"). Prevention has priority, working people are not ill per se, it is precisely the illnesses or accidents that must be prevented. To do this, occupational physicians must actively approach their target group.
Dual task in occupational medicine
The task field of occupational medicine is characterized by dualism. On the one hand there is the individual, the working person. On the other hand, there are the operational organizational processes and structures. This dualism is reflected in the fields of work of occupational physicians:
Occupational physicians also use other methods, such as ergometry, audiometry, visual acuity measurements, X-ray diagnostics and spirometry, dermatological, neurological, allergological and orthopedic examination methods. An interdisciplinary orientation is characteristic of occupational physicians. They communicate with other medical professionals as well as with representatives of non-medical specialties in order to involve them in diagnostics and problem solving.
Training of occupational physicians
Occupational medicine is a specialist field, the company and occupational doctors must have certain experience and knowledge in the early detection of work-related health disorders. A comparatively large part of the training also includes prevention. Epidemiological principles are important in order to be able to correctly assess the influence of the spread of hazardous substances. The core of the later activity, around which the training must be based, are:
Occupational physicians must also have management knowledge and skills. It also includes concepts for emergency medicine in the workplace (including first aid) and company health management, as well other focal points in its model further training regulations, including occupational physiology, participation in medical, occupational and social rehabilitation, the occupational reintegration of chronically ill people and the assessment of the performance of employees.
