Occupational health provision among workers in Germany
Results of the representative lidA study
Introduction:
There is an ongoing debate in Germany as to whether there is a sufficient number of active occupational health physicians (OHPs) to meet the need for occupational health surveillance. In this contribution, the frequency of OHP contact with employees is investigated based on data of a representative sample of older workers in Germany.
Methods:
The data come from the third wave (2018) of the German lidA study (www.lida-studie.de), a longitudinal study investigating work, age, health and employment among workers born in 1959 or 1965. Data analysis was restricted to those in full-time or part-time employment at the time of the interview (n=3039). The analysis of data is descriptive and specification by occupation required at least 25 cases per occupational group.
Results:
62.1 percent of all respondents (n=1888) reported that their enterprise had an OHP. 52.1 percent of all employees had already had personal contact with him, half of them in the past 12 months. It was not possible to identify a statistically significant correlation with the extent of physical strain at work. Members of the engineering and medical professions and academics reported high OHP contact rates, while low rates were reported by some manual and service professions (e.g. construction and cleaning jobs), administrative professions and retail workers.
Discussion:
The findings do not point directly to a shortage of OHPs in Germany. However, they do suggest an imbalance in the distribution of OHP resources: some occupations report OHP contacts on a smaller scale than would be expected, whilst the opposite applies to others.
Conclusions:
There is a need for an in-depth scientific analysis of the current organisation, practice and quality of occupational health surveillance in Germany.
