Occupational medicine practice: activities and skills of a national sample.
OBJECTIVE
To characterize activities and skills of occupational physicians using work diaries.


METHODS
A total of 260 occupational physicians from a national sample provided task/skill descriptions at approximately 25 specific times. The average percentage of activity samples using a skill and the interquartile range expressed results.


RESULTS
Clinical activities, particularly musculoskeletal, were most frequent, followed by industry and health system management. Traditional public health approaches were infrequent. Injured patients, employers, and healthy workers were the most common beneficiaries. Communication about prevention and work restrictions was frequent. Interphysician variability was high for most measures.


CONCLUSIONS
Results demonstrated a dichotomy-many frequent activities/skills are associated with other specialties as well (eg, treating injury); others, albeit less frequently used, demarcate the uniqueness of occupational medicine (eg, preventive examinations, toxicology, benefiting employers or worker groups, assessing work ability, payment by employers).
Occupational & Environmental Medicine Division, Department of Family Medicine, David Geffen School of Medicine at University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California 90024, USA. pharber@mednet.ucla.edu
Philip
P
Harber
Sasha
S
Rose
Johnny
J
Bontemps
Kaochoy
K
Saechao
Yihang
Y
Liu
David
D
Elashoff
Samantha
S
Wu
D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009787:Occupational Medicine; D010820:Physicians; D010818:Practice Patterns, Physicians'; D011361:Professional Competence; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014481:United States