Taking an Occupational History and Its Importance

Abstract

Occupational diseases are a group of illnesses that every physician will see in daily practice. A substantial part of the population is working thus the fact that their  occupation  plays  a  significant  role  in  their  illnesses  or  maintaining  the  healthy state should never be underestimated. However, there is a mispercep-tion as if occupational diseases are just a few syndromes or a couple of chron-ical illnesses, back from the medical school. Whereas occupational diseases can be  the  cause  of  almost  every  signs  and  symptoms  from  hematologic  system  to musculoskeletal system or skin to central nervous system. Therefore, every physician whoever wants to diagnose his/her patient accurately must endeav-or  to  recognize  occupational  diseases  or  at  least  be  suspicious.  Even  though  occupational diseases are a part of a clinical picture they are also a community health problem. This is true because the working population make an import-ant part in the entire population. At the same time, they are more susceptible to some certain risks than normal population.  Yet these health problems are preventable there could be excellent examples of primary prevention. Another feature of occupational diseases is the opportunity of discovering new diseas-es and syndromes. This is an undeveloped area for descriptive, analytic and ex-perimental studies. Also, the compensation laws, legal problems are becoming a current issue and physicians are frequently asked to deliver an opinion about disability and incapacity. Misdiagnosis or delays in diagnosis of an occupation-al illness may put the physician in a troublesome situation.

Keywords:Occupational diseases, occupational anamnesis, occupational healt