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[The occupational physicians' responsibilities]
1anna.guardavilla@libero.it
Insights
Occupational physicians face legal accountability for workplace safety violations and for causing occupational illnesses or accidents. Recent legal reforms emphasize their collaborative role in risk assessment and align their duties with employer responsibilities.
Area of Science:
- Occupational Medicine
- Legal Medicine
- Public Health Law
Context:
- Evolving occupational safety and health legislation necessitates a re-evaluation of physicians' roles.
- Physicians' duties now include greater collaboration in workplace risk assessment.
- Legal precedents from Supreme Court judgments inform the understanding of physician responsibility.
Purpose:
- To analyze the legal responsibilities and potential criminal liabilities of occupational physicians.
- To clarify the evolving scope of occupational physicians' functions within current legal frameworks.
- To examine the relationship between occupational physicians' duties and those of employers and managers.
Summary:
- Occupational physicians can incur legal penalties for violating safety regulations or causing work-related diseases/accidents.
- Recent legislative changes require physicians to actively participate in workplace risk evaluations.
- Physician accountability is interconnected with employer and management responsibilities, particularly concerning health surveillance.
Impact:
- Provides a clearer understanding of occupational physicians' legal obligations and potential consequences.
- Highlights the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration in ensuring workplace safety.
- Informs employers and managers about their role in ensuring physicians fulfill their professional duties.
Abstract:
Occupational physicians can commit two kind of crimes: they can violate rules of safety and health at work with no immediate consequences for the employees but anyway creating a potential danger for them, or they can cause, because of their blame, occupational diseases or accidents at work to the employees. In both cases they can be punished. If we want to understand in detail this kind of responsibility, we must read the Supreme Court's judgements (Supreme Court, 19099/2009; 26539/2008; 20220/2006; 17838/2005; 26439/2007; 24290/2005). The numberless innovations introduced in recent years in the body of occupational safety and health laws called for a different reading of the meaning and the content of occupational physicians' functions, requiring them to collaborate, more than in the past, in the assessment of workplace risks. The responsibility of occupational physicians should be seen also in relation to the responsibility of employers and managers (see the link between health surveillance and art. 18 paragraph 1 letter c) of Legislative Decree no. 81/08). In the occupational safety and health context, the employer and his managers must also require (and ensure) occupational physicians to fulfill their obligations and professional duties.
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