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Occupational Medicine Advance Access originally published online on January 21, 2008
Occupational Medicine 2008 58(2):115-121; doi:10.1093/occmed/kqm146
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© 2008 The Author(s)
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/uk/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Diagnosing and reporting of occupational diseases: a quality improvement study

D. Spreeuwers1, A. G. E. M. de Boer1, J. H. A. M. Verbeek1,2, M. M. van Beurden1 and F. J. H. van Dijk1

1 Coronel Institute of Occupational Health, Academic Medical Centre, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands
2 Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, Knowledge Transfer Team, Kuopio, Finland

Aim To assess the need for quality improvement of diagnosing and reporting of noise-induced occupational hearing loss and occupational adjustment disorder.

Methods Performance indicators and criteria for the quality of diagnosing and reporting were developed. Self-assessment questionnaires were sent to all occupational physicians recorded on the Netherlands Centre for Occupational Diseases database. The performance of responding occupational physicians was then assessed by separate scores per performance indicator and by a total quality score.

Results Twenty-three questionnaires on noise-induced occupational hearing loss and 125 questionnaires on occupational adjustment disorder were available for analysis. The mean quality score for diagnosing and reporting was 6.0 (SD: 1.4) for noise-induced occupational hearing loss and 7.9 (SD: 1.5) for occupational adjustment disorder on a scale of 0–10. For noise-induced occupational hearing loss, there was a need for quality improvement of the aspects of medical history, audiometric measurement, clinical diagnosis of the disease and reporting. For occupational adjustment disorder, the assessment of other non-occupational causes needed improvement.

Conclusions The quality of diagnosing and reporting could be improved for noise-induced occupational hearing loss and occupational adjustment disorders. Information, education and practical tools are proposed for quality improvements.

Keywords      Occupational diseases; quality assessment; registration

Correspondence to: D. Spreeuwers, Coronel Institute of Occupational Health, Academic Medical Centre, University of Amsterdam, PO Box 22700, 1100 DE Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Tel: +31 20 5665387; fax: +31 20 5669288; e-mail: d.spreeuwers{at}amc.uva.nl


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