Occupational Health: Meeting the Challenges of the Next 20 Years

BACKGROUND: The industrial revolution that took place in the United Kingdom (UK) between 1760 and 1830 led to profound social change. Occupational medicine was concerned with the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of occupational diseases, that is, diseases directly caused by exposure to workplace hazards. A similar pattern of development has occurred globally. METHODS: A review of relevant literature. RESULTS: The international conceptualization and development of occupational health occurred during the 20th century. A new paradigm for occupational health has emerged that extends the classical focus on what might be termed "health risk management" that is, the focus on workplace hazards and risk to health to include the medical aspects of sickness absence and rehabilitation, the support and management of chronic noncommunicable diseases, and workplace health promotion. CONCLUSION: The future strategic direction for occupational health will be informed by a needs analysis and a consideration of where it should be positioned within future healthcare provision. What are the occupational health workforce implications of the vision for occupational health provision? New challenges and new ways of working will necessitate a review of the competence and capacity of the occupational health workforce, with implications for future workforce planning.

Design and validation of a questionnaire to measure the attitudes of hospital staff concerning pandemic influenza

When pandemics lead to a higher workload in the heathcare sector, the attitude of healthcare staff and, more importantly, the ability to predict the rate of absence due to sickness are crucial factors in emergency preparedness and resource allocation. The aim of this study was to design and validate a questionnaire to measure the attitude of hospital staff toward work attendance during an influenza pandemic. An online questionnaire was designed and electronically distributed to the staff of a teaching medical institution in the United Kingdom. The questionnaire was designed de novo following discussions with colleagues at Imperial College and with reference to the literature on the severe acute respiratory syndrome [SARS] epidemic. The questionnaire included 15 independent fact variables and 33 dependent measure variables. A total of 367 responses were received in this survey. The data from the measurement variables were not normally distributed. Three different methods [standardized residuals, Mahalanobis distance and Cook's distance] were used to identify the outliers. In all, 19 respondents [5.17%] were identified as outliers and were excluded