PREVENTIVE OCCUPATIONAL-MEDICINE IN INDUSTRIAL-ENTERPRISES - THE FUTURE MEDICAL CONTRIBUTION

Today, occupational medicine encounters challenges above and beyond its responsibilities as formulated by the Industrial Safety Law: general diseases of an endemic nature limit the efficiency and self-realization of the gainfully employed. Consequently, works doctors must be given the chance to promote health effectively on a medical basis. Occupational medicine has to introduce into environmental medicine the stress-strain concept, substantiated data on biological long-term monitoring and on health-relevant effects in humans and the integral consideration of all their biological, psychological and social conditions within and outside the working situation. Works doctors are better prepared than others to implement prevention and should be given more responsibility, e.g. in protection of youth at work. In every case, their status as agert of the entrepreneur for the safety of human beings is subject to medical ethics and the catalog of medical obligations and must enable them to establish a relationship of trust with employee.