[Sociological description of an occupational group of industrial physicians]

The paper presents the results of evaluating the socioprofessional position of industrial physicians all over the country. Those results were obtained from a postal questionnaire which was sent from the Institute of Occupational Medicine, Lódź, in 1979, to over 70% of physicians employed in occupational health service. The paper presents a description of one of the many items investigated, i.e. the description of socio-demographic features and selected features describing the qualifications. The general "sociologic" picture of the population concerned is as follows: on the whole the sex proportions of industrial physicians are almost equalized although women dominate (56%), yet the feminizing tendency in that category of specialists is increasing. Industrial physicians are mostly middle-aged people (mainly 40 years old) of nearly 20--years' employment as physicians. Although they have carried on their profession for a long time, the industrial physicians have I degree specialization (every third) or they have no formal specialization at all. Among those specialized the most numerous are specialists of internal diseases and industrial medicine--the latter comprising only 1.3 of the subjects.