[Collaboration between occupational physicians and other specialists including insurance physicians]

Collaboration between various stakeholders is essential for a well-operating vocational rehabilitation process. Researchers have mentioned, among other players, insurance physicians, the curative sector and employers. In 2011 the WHO organised the congress "Connecting Health and Labour: What role for occupational health in primary care". The congress was also attended by representatives of the WONCA (World Organisations of Family Medicine). In general, everyone agreed that occupational health aspects should continue to be seen as an integral part of primary health care. However, it is not easy to find literature on this subject. For this reason we conducted a review. We searched for literature relating to collaboration with occupational physicians in Dutch, English and German between 2001 and autumn 2011. Our attention focused on cooperation with specialists and insurance physicians. Therefore, we searched PUBMED using MeSH terms and made use of the database from the "Tijdschrift voor bedrijfs- en verzekeringsgeneeskunde (TBV) [Dutch Journal for Occupational - and Insurance Medicine]". We also checked the database from the "Deutsches Arzteblatt [German Medical Journal]" and made use of the online catalogue from THIEME - eJOURNALS. Last but not least, I used the online catalogue from the German paper "Arbeits -, Sozial -, Umweltmedizin [Occupational -, Social -, Milieu Medicine]". Additionally, we made use of the "snowball - method" to find relevant literature. We found many references to this subject. The Netherlands in particular has done a lot of research in this field. However, there is little research on the cooperation between occupational physicians and specialists; in particular insurance physicians. This is interesting, because several authors have mentioned its importance. However, cooperation with other specialists seems not to be the norm. Therefore, cooperation between curative physicians (specialists but also family doctors), insurance physicians and other stakeholders is essential and should be improved. In the future researchers should develop techniques, which help to improve collabora- tion. For example, Dutch investigators advocate the development of guidelines. There is agreement that collaboration between occupational physicians and some other specialists is important. In particular, collaboration between specialists in physical medicine has been investigated. Also, curative physicians and insurance physicians have an important role in disability management. So all stakeholders should work together more intensively. However, literature is difficult to find and not often part of international literature. This must change urgently.