医療受診状況と事業所診療所の役割 第2編 職種別の検討

The influence of the occupations of factory workers on their health needs was analyzed by reviewing their health records. The study was carried out on the male workers at a paper factory managed by the national government. Five types of occupations were defined: management personnel, foremen, shift-workers, day-workers with the experience of shif-twork, and day-workers without any experience of shift-work.The frequency of receiving medical services and medical expenditures was high among the day-workers with shift-work experience, among whom there existed many workers who quit shift-work because of health problems. Among management personnel and foremen, the frequency of receiving medical services, especially those at medical institutions outside the factory, was low. The ratio of medical service provided by an occupational health doctor to that provided by medical institutions outside the plant was high among the management personnel, because they have difficulty in leaving the plant during working time, while other workers are allowed to go out to receive medical service without any salary reduction. Among management personnel and foremen, the frequency of sick leaves was low, but the length of one sick leave tended to be longer. This result shows that the management personnel and foremen have difficulty in taking sick leaves at the early stage of the disease, so that the length of the leave becomes long when they take a sick leave.These results suggest that the consideration of workers' occupations is important, as well as their age and sex pointed out in the first report, to provide adequate health services to the workers.