Challenges for secondary individual prevention of skin disease in metal workers - Evaluation and major results of an interdisciplinary measure implemented more than 10 years ago

Abstract

Background: Workers in the metal industry are at high risk of developing occupational skin diseases. Due to widely differing working fields, knowledge on the individual workplace is of utmost importance. Interdisciplinary preventive measures serve, among others, to extend the disease-specific knowledge and enable job retention. Methodology: Against this background, a multi-professional secondary individual prevention measure for people insured with the German Social Accident Insurance Institution for the woodworking and metalworking industries (BGHM) (Dortmund district administration) was developed in 2007: At first, affected persons are examined in the Department of Dermatology of the Klinikum Dortmund. As part of a 1-day seminar, the participants receive a health educational training and counselling concerning skin protection which is carried out by staff of the prevention service of the BGHM. Furthermore, a dermatological examination is conducted. Immediately, as well as 6 and 12 months after the seminar, the participants are asked to complete a standardized questionnaire containing both open and closed questions. Results: Complete data sets of 94 insured persons are available for the period January 2013 to April 2016. In general, participants were highly satisfied with the preventive measure which can be seen in the survey results of both after the seminar and the follow-up surveys. Furthermore, the participants' knowledge concerning occupational skin diseases significantly increased, which was discernible in the follow-up period too (p < 0.05). Discussion: The results of this 1-year follow-up survey on the presented preventive measure show that a combination of training and individual counselling of the participants leads to a high degree of satisfaction and an increase in knowledge. In summary, the measure can be rated as successful, which is reflected by the high rate of job retention.