engleski

Assessing the ability to work - some open issues

The field of occupational medicine includes procedures for determining the ability to work as well as determining temporary or permanent disability for work. Often, assessing the ability to work, we encounter such chronic health impairments that require a serious reflection on the final assessment of work ability. Generally, in most cases, it is not such a health impairment and such a loss of ability for work as it would have compensated for the disability in the pension insurance system. In such cases, a worker should either be moved to another job or kept in the existing workplace, provided that the scope and type of work tasks are adapted to his or her health status. That is to say, adaptation of the workplace needs to be introduced that will allow to exploit worker's ability in a full range, in accordance with health status and ability to perform work tasks. Often, in the assessment of the work capacity, doctors cite and recommend limitations that describe in detail what an employee can not do in order to provide the employer with more detailed instructions on how to continue and how to preserve worker's capacity to work in the future period, until the next preventive health examination. The process of work ability evaluation ends with the adoption of a final health assessment which, while respecting health status changes, is often in contravention of the assessment provided for in the regulation under which an examination is made in the medical practice. Such actions are proclaimed by lawyers or sometimes by the ombudsman as discriminatory, although the intent is exactly the opposite: to preserve the health and work ability of the worker and keep it in the workplace. In order to avoid misconceptions in this regard, and to inform the professional public, especially young generations in the field of occupational medicine, we have made an overview of the types of regulations taht regulate provision of regular health examinations of workers. Evaluations of the work ability present important step in evaluation of work ability. Hence, this paper presents the list of the regulations and, accordingly, the evaluations of the capacity for work that are prescribed by a particular regulation.

health at work ; chronic illness ; regulations ; assessment of work ability

nije evidentirano