Occupational Health

1
Occupational Health

• Why do we need it?

2
What is Occupational Health?

• Effect of work on health and health on work
• 3 main areas
• Health surveillance
• Health promotion
• Sickness absence management

3
History

• 1544 De Re Metallica Georgius Agricola
• 1700 De Morbis Artificium Diatriba - Barnadino
  Ramazzini
• 1800 Effects of the Arts, Trades and Sciences
  etc Charles Turner Thackrah
• 1932 Industrial Maladies Sir Thomas Legge
• 1955 Diseases of Occupations Donald Hunter

4
Provision of Occupational Health

• Historically, used to be in-house
• Essentially reactive but developing interest and
  expertise in the industry they worked for
• Associated with the large national industries,
  coal, oil, steel, car manufacture
• Most industries no longer in-house
• National occupational health providers
• Independent practitioners
• G.Ps with an interest
• NHS plus
• The future?

5
Health Surveillance

• Audiometry
• Skin reviews
• Respiratory
• Standards
• Firemen
• Pilots
• Divers
• Dvla
• Specifics
• Lead
• Ionising radiation
• Asbestos

6
Health Surveillance

• 1897 Workmans Compensation Act
• 1906 6 industrial diseases compensatable
• 1946 Industrial Injuries legislation
• 1972 Health and Safety at Work etc
• Employers responsible for compensation,
  irrespective of negligence

7
Health Surveillance

• 2006/2007 self reported work-related ill health
  (Labour Force Survey)
• 132,000 in Wales
• Equivalent to 6 of the working population
• 2.2 million working days lost
• Calculated costs to employers up to 7.8 billion
  pounds
• Calculated costs to economy up to 22.2 billion
  pounds

8
Health promotion

• Health screening
• Executive medicals
• Programmes
• Healthy eating
• Stop smoking
• Stress management
• Exercise for life
• Work life balance

9
Health promotion

• Ageing population and workforce
• Poorer standards of well being
• Obesity
• High blood pressure
• Heart disease
• Smoking

10
Health promotion

• Costs of chronic ill-health
• Higher sickness absence
• Ill health retirement
• Loss of resources/experience to the workplace
• Loss of productivity
• Loss of income

11
Sickness Absence

• Mix of short and long term absences
• Occupational health more involved in long term
  sickness absence
• Assessing cases
• Advising management
• Rehabilitation to the workplace
• Adjustments in the workplace
• Case management

12
Sickness absence

• Work is good for your health
• People in employment have a better health profile
  than those not employed
• Returning to work improves your health outcomes
  both physical and mental
• Better quality of life and finances
• Longer absence from work reduces chance of ever
  returning
• 80 those off gt6 months never return

13
Sickness absence

• CBI costs to UK employers approx 12 to 13
  billion
• Dame Carol Black costs to UK economy 100
  billion
• 5th March 2008 consensus statement unified
  approach in returning people to work
• Fit for work notes
• DWP working with GPs to increase their
  understanding of occupational health and links
  between work and health
• Occupational health more mainstream
• Model of GPs referring to OH consultants in the
  same way that they refer to surgeons or physicians

14
Wellness in the Workplace

• Needs analysis
• Understanding of specific organisational
  priorities
• Design of a programme of activities
• Evaluate worth of programme

15
Challenges for the future

• Changing the mind set of the population
• Shortage of qualified staff
• Variable quality of staff
• Uneven spread of services
• Attractiveness of customers
• National
• SMEs