Physical or mental impairments, which affect NHS employees’ ability to safely perform assigned work, are relevant issues in health policy. Moreover, the aging of NHS staff, the cost-containment policies in public spending and the limited fungibility of work tasks are increasing the inherent complexity of workforce management in healthcare sector. This article, after having depicted the context in which this phenomenon takes place, analyzes current Italian regulations and then describes the critical issues that are related to health surveillance. In particular, the difficult quantification of the phenomenon, the new role and professionalism of Occupational Health Physicians and Institutions, the need to strengthen the evidence of health surveillance effectiveness and cost-utility emerge from the analysis.
Keywords: Occupational Health Physicians, medical surveillance, impairments, limitations, organizations, NHS workforce
Carlo De Pietro, Guglielmo Pacileo, Marco Sartirana, Agnese Pirazzoli, Pietro Apostoli, in "MECOSAN" 97/2016, pp. 9-29, DOI:10.3280/MESA2016-097002