Introduction to Care of the worker

This week consists of four topics, followed by one discussion and a quiz

Occupational Health Services

Occupational health services for all workers has been a long-term objective of the World Health Organization. Few countries, if any, have completely lived up to this challenge. After this session, you will know that the role of occupational health services should be essentially preventive, and their activity should take into account the particular occupational hazards in the working environment as well as the problems specific to the branches they serve.

Pregnant workers

After this session, you will know that certain workplaces may have conditions that are unsafe for a pregnant worker and her unborn child, but that our knowledge about how the different exposures can affect the outcome is limited. You will also learn more about legislation and the rights of pregnant workers as well as that these differ from country to country. Despite the lack of consistency in legislation across countries and the gaps in our knowledge about specific hazards, we will try to give you some guidelines for managing pregnant workers.

Work place rehabilitation

This week you will learn about work place rehabilitation; what it is and why it is important. Two types of rehabilitation will be discussed. One is how to help a worker who develops reduced working capacity due to some disease or injury, but who can still contribute to the work place. Another type of rehabilitation is making it possible for any handicapped person to work. We can help workers at the individual level, with treatment and support improving the health and function of the worker. We can also improve the technical solutions at the work place. There is little or no work place rehabilitation in some countries and more information on the topic is needed.

Addressing occupational health issues

Here, we present some problematic work situations for you, and ask you to either answer some questions related to them, or to discuss the issue. We hope you have learned a few things in our course, so you are able to answer. We wish you good luck and hope you like the challenges.