Trends in employee health service : Margaret F. McKiever, editor.

  • United States. Public Health Service. Division of Occupational Health
Date:
1965]
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Trends in employee health service : Margaret F. McKiever, editor. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    This whole subject of occupational health and medicine is analogous to a three-legged stool, one leg representing medical science, one repre- senting engineering and chemical science and one representing the social sciences. . . . Up to the present we have been trying to bal- ance ourselves on two legs and in some instances on one leg. It is a very uncomfortable position and one that cannot get us very far and certainly will lead, as it has, to fatigue. Quoted from Hussey, Raymond; In discussion of article by Hemeon, W. C. L.: “Engineering in Industrial Health Education.” Occupational Medicine, 4: 204 (August) 1947. There are at least seven more or less distinct functions involved in the promotion of industrial health [environmental health, health education, preemployment physical examinations, diagnostic services, first aid, treatment of disease, rehabilitation]. . .. For the provi- sion of these seven types of service, there are four different agencies in the picture: Industry, labor, the medical profession, and the public; and any two or more of these agencies may cooperate in solving parts of the problem. The possible complexities of administrative relation- ship stagger the imagination. . . . There is no single, perfect solu- tion of this problem now in sight. There is rather a challenge to the inventiveness of management, labor, the medical profession, and the public to find empirically the best plan that. will fit a given local situation. For management and labor, the need for cooperation in the meeting of a common problem is called for rather than insistence on vested interests. For the medical profession, it seems certain that the principles of group payment and group practice must be essential to any sound solution. For the public-health authorities, leadership in research, formulation of reasonable standards of attainment, and assistance to small industries, where desirable, would appear to be the appropriate role. Quoted from Editorial: American Journal of Public Health, 37: 1337- 13839 (October) 1947. Industrial medicine is concerned as much with the environment as with the man. To study man in his environment, to understand the man and to control his environment as his needs require—these are the essential goals of industrial hygiene. It is clear that these cannot be achieved by physicians alone. They require the collaboration of the social, biologic and physical sciences and disciplines in research, practice and instruction. Quoted from Kehoe, Robert A.: “Significance of Industrial Health.” Oc- cupational Medicine, 4: 899 (October-December) 1947. Industrial health, or industrial hygiene as it is commonly called, is concerned with the prevention of occupational diseases and the main- tenance of the health of industrial workers on a high level. It re- quires the combined efforts of a variety of professional personnel,