Teaching occupational health to medical students

Occupational and environmental disease and injury are both widespread and preventable, yet their study has been traditionally neglected in undergraduate medical education. Because family physicians will encounter many working patients who are subject to varying degrees of risk as a result of their job, home, or community environment, family practice faculty must play an important role in teaching occupational and environmental health to medical students. Goals for the longitudinal integration of occupational and environmental health over the four-year curriculum include sensitizing students to the relationship between work and health, introducing and reinforcing the importance of the occupational and environmental history in patient care, integrating occupational and environmental health principles and examples with existing course work, and providing appropriate clinical, research, and didactic activities for interested students. Goal achievement will vary with the availability of curricular time and teaching faculty. Strategies for implementing occupational and environmental health curriculum in the face of these two variables are discussed.