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Occupational health

Occupational medicine is the branch of practice concerned with the provision of health advice to organisations and individuals to ensure that the highest standards of health and safety at work can be achieved and maintained. Occupational physicians must have a wide knowledge of clinical medicine and be competent in a number of important areas.

An occupational physician is a doctor, with specialist training and qualifications who in relation to any particular work place takes full clinical responsibility for advising management and the workforce on all health matters connected directly or indirectly with their employment. This may have a bearing on health as it affects work or on the effect of work on health, including that of the public at large, either in general or as individuals.

Just as clinical physicians would not take responsibility for the health of patients without examining them, so occupational physicians cannot properly undertake their responsibilities without regular assessment of the workplace.