The institution supports the timely diagnosis of occupational health issues on the appearance of physical or psychological symptoms, which allows for early workplace interventions.
Such interventions could include changes to work processes, improved protective devices or the removal of workers from exposure, effective medical treatment and improving the safety behaviour of exposed employees.
Guideline code
PREV_02800
Mechanism
Mechanism
- The prevention department should ensure that standards for physical and/or psychological check-ups are developed for use as guidelines by physicians and other medical staff, to ensure that examinations are standardized.
- The management should ensure that a suitable infrastructure is established to support physicians conducting preventive examinations. This includes contracting physicians qualified in the field of occupational medicine and ensuring they are technically equipped, qualified and competent to use such equipment for the diagnosis of particular diseases (e.g. an x-ray unit to detect pneumoconiosis).
- The prevention department should organize long-term follow-up examinations in order to detect adverse effects on health which have a long period of latency (e.g. exposure to carcinogenic substances such as asbestos), including for workers who have moved to a different area of work or retired. This also includes preventive follow-up examinations of individuals who have been receiving medical treatment and rehabilitation measures due to a previous occupational accident or disease.
Structure
Structure
- The competent national authorities should define a legal framework ensuring that all employees to be exposed to particular health hazards at work undergo systematic medical health screening before starting hazardous work and are periodically re-examined.
- The national authorities and the board, in line with the national legal framework, should agree on policy that addresses the medical confidentiality and internal and external data processing of the institution and provides guidance for the medical profession as to when to report suspicion of an occupational disease to the institution. If an adequate legal framework is missing the board should initiate a process to provide one.
- The board should allocate funds for a preventive medicine service.
Title HTML
Guideline 21. Preventive medical examinations
Type
Guideline_1
Weight
32