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Surveillance of work-related disorders in Australia using general practitioner data
Tim R Driscoll1, A Leigh Hendrie
1Centre for Occupational and Environmental Health, Department of Public Health and Community Medicine, University of Sydney, New South Wales. elmatom@optushome.com.au
Objectives:
The focus of this paper is to compare the main findings regarding work-related problems managed in general practice with those of other data sources in the occupational and public health arenas that provide some information on work-related disorders in Australia, in order to examine the implications for surveillance and prevention.
Methods:
Data on work-related disorders managed in general practice were obtained from a larger study of general practice activity that involved a cluster random sample of all significantly active general practitioners in Australia from 1998 to 2000. These data were compared with other Australian datasets containing information on work-related disorders.
Results:
Despite a predominance of musculoskeletal conditions in all the data sources, general practitioner data provided a different picture of work-related disorders in the community to workers' compensation information from the National Data Set of Compensation-based Statistics (NDS) and the limited information on work-related disorders available from other studies of general practice and emergency departments. The mix of conditions was different in many aspects, and diseases were much less common in the NDS.
Conclusions:
General practitioner data supplement data provided by other sources, particularly the NDS, and make an important contribution to filling some of the gaps in information about work-related diseases and more minor work-related injuries.
Implications:
General practitioners could prove a useful supplementary source of data on work-related disorders, but the optimal content of, and method for obtaining, these data is not clear.