Introduction
Many employees are familiar with occupational medicine, which is the branch of medicine that deals with health and safety services in the workplace. The aim of this specialty is essentially to prevent work-related accidents and illnesses. The occupational physician is responsible for advising employers and employees on all matters relating to health and safety in the workplace. Any company based in a country that has ratified the ILO (International Labour Organisation) standards on health and safety at work is obliged to respect and apply them. Hospitals are not exempt from providing occupational health and safety services, but they are among those who are striving to develop action plans to improve these services for their employees.
OCCUPATIONAL RISKS IN HOSPITALS
On a daily basis, healthcare professionals are exposed to risks specific to this environment, such as accidents involving exposure to blood, which can lead to contamination by various blood-borne diseases or the more recent case of the Covid-19 pandemic. The medical profession was on the front line, and its importance became clear during this period. Preventing situations that could damage physical, psychological and ergonomic integrity (adapting work to people and people to their work) remains the main aim of occupational medicine, which is not always achieved in the hospital environment because of the almost constant standing of healthcare staff, their emotional insensitivity to the traumas they face in the course of their work, and the risks of contamination by contagious diseases. As a result, current occupational medicine does not adequately address all these aspects of hospital work.
THE ILO CONVENTIONS ON OCCUPATIONAL MEDICINE
Although committees and bodies have been established in hospitals to organize and implement workplace health and safety norms, it remains challenging to make them effective and applicable. Several hospitals and health facilities employ approximately a thousand individuals. Any company with 400 to 750 employees is required by ILO Convention 161 on the organization of occupational health and safety services to have a corporate occupational health service and an occupational physician. For each additional 100 employees over 750, an additional occupational physician must be recruited. This agreement is not usually followed, whether in hospitals or elsewhere.
CONCLUSION
Reinforcing and advocating compliance with occupational health and safety laws and their enforcement by competent authorities should provide a focal point to push companies, especially hospitals, to respect and enforce them, as these are the linchpin of public health and human competence in society. Nevertheless, the trend is becoming favourable in Senegal, for example, with the creation since 2016 of a diploma of specialised studies in occupational medicine and the growing interest of the new generation of doctors in this speciality. The aim is still to provide all workers, whatever their sector of activity, with adequate and appropriate occupational health and safety services in all circumstances.
