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Student Careers

Occupational medicine

BMJ 2002; 325 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/sbmj.0209323 (Published 01 September 2002) Cite this as: BMJ 2002;325:0209323
  1. Gordon Parker, group medical adviser1,
  2. James Mackie, specialist registrar2
  1. 1Ranks Hovis McDougall; training dean, Faculty of Occupational Medicine, London
  2. 2Previa UK, Redditch Worcestershire

Gordon Parker and James Mackie explain what is involved in this specialty and how to train for it

Mention “occupational medicine” to a medical student or to a doctor in the first few years of training, and you are likely to be met with a blank expression. Few students, preregistration house officers, or senior house officers will know anything about the specialty as occupational medicine no longer features as a distinct specialty in the undergraduate curriculum and there is currently only one senior house officer post in occupational medicine. Even when there was an occupational health component in the undergraduate curriculum, it was often based on a visit to a local factory or couple of lectures on industrial diseases that may not have captured the imagination.

Your exposure to “occupational health” in the early years of training may be confined to enquiries about your hepatitis B status and health questionnaires every time you change jobs. This level of contact with the specialty is hardly likely to fill you with enthusiasm for a career in occupational medicine.

Occupational medicine still isn't a high profile clinical specialty, but around 70 NHS consultants and 500 specialists are working in industry. Alongside the full time specialists are several hundred doctors, qualified to diploma level, who practice occupational medicine part time, usually in combination with general practice.

An occupational physician's nightmare- injuries caused by hedge trimmers

What exactly is occupational medicine?

Occupational medicine is essentially about the relation between health and work. This includes both the possible effects of work on health (occupational or “industrial” diseases) and the effects of someone's health on their capacity for work. Almost half the United Kingdom's population works, and in 1995-6, 1.3 million people reported ill health that they attributed to their work.1 Lost working days amounted to 24.3 million, and 27 000 …

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