Health educational patient counseling in individual prevention: Practical examples of opportunities and challenges regarding the optimization of personal protective equipment

Abstract

On the level of individual prevention, health educational patient counselling has long been a part of interdisciplinary, outpatient and inpatient prevention measures to care for patient with work-related skin diseases. Through health educational interventions, patients should be enabled to improve their individual skin protection behavior at the workplace, e.g., by using appropriate protective gloves. During counseling, various and often complex requirements must be considered, e.g., the respective occupational activity with its exposures, specific work processes and job requirements, the dermatological diagnosis with possible, occupationally relevant type IV sensitizations, the legal framework, hygiene regulations as well as certain requirements for protective measures such as high tactility, breathability, or grip. The article describes the general procedure of health educational patient counseling. Based on five cases from the counseling practice, the respective initial situation and problem definition, the counseling goal and the individual counseling results are presented. Through intensive research, a detailed analysis of occupational exposures, profound knowledge of possible protective measures and interdisciplinary cooperation, optimization potentials for improved skin protection can be elaborated and thus, in individual cases, individual preventive measures can enable the patient to remain in occupational activity.