Interdisciplinary collaboration between primary health care and occupational health services

Abstract

Introduction: Employees’ poor health is a major problem both nationally and globally. Healthy workers are the backbone of a prosperous economy, thus in preserving and strengthening employees’ health is interested not only the employer but also the state.

Objective of the study: Analysis of interdisciplinary collaboration between primary health care and occupational health. Materials and methods: Bibliographical-descriptive, analytical and comparative study of literature in occupational health and primary health care field. Results: Occupational health and primary heath care have close similarities in disease prevention and health promotion, early notification of professional diseases and vocational rehabilitation. According to WHO, the level of occupational and work-related diseases is growing, while globally only 10-15% of employees have access to occupational health services and the other 85-90% benefit only of primary health care services. So physicians are not only the connecting link between the patient / employee and occupational health specialist, but, in countries with rudimentary occupational health services, is the sole provider of occupational health services. It has been demonstrated that the major share of physicians have diagnosing professional illness as weakness due to the omission of the patient’s occupation and lacks of knowledge about new technologies in the work processes. Unfortunately, in Moldova, there is a minimum intersection between occupational health and primary health care services in daily practice and in continuing medical education. Moreover, with population aging and the increase of retirement age we can expect a growing number of health problems among these economically active persons. Both occupational and habitual factors are important in determining health risks of a worker. Thus, physicians must understand the occupational health services and vice versa. This makes vital the productive collaboration between medical specialists in occupational health with physicians, organizing courses for physicians in the fields of labor hygiene and occupational diseases. An integrated approach of occupational health services and primary health care services will have a greater impact on the health of the working age population.