Provision of basic occupational health services to health care workers

Introduction
Although health care workers (HCWs) are exposed to many occupational hazards and at high risk of getting occupational diseases, they do not receive adequately basic occupational health services (BOHS) as they think they could take care their health by themselves. This paper evaluated BOHS provided to HCWs in Vietnam and described some activities and good practices to promote BOHS for HCWs.

Methods
132 health care facilities (HCFs) over the country from national to grass root levels and in 9437 HCWs were interviewed and legislative documents related to BOHS were reviewed through National survey.

Results
The results of study showed that low number of HCFs conducted the working environment monitoring (44.5% of hospitals and 10% of preventive medicine facilities). Less than 50% HCFs organized OSH trainings and 2/3 investigated HCWs did not attend any OSH trainings. The number of HCWs who were under annual periodic health examination was very low: 18.5% of hospitals and 9.9% of preventive HCWs. Almost HCFs provided enough basic PPEs to HCWs, such as white clothes, hats, masks and gloves. Although majority of therapeutic HCWs worked overtime and at night (80%), less than 1/3 HCFs implemented these policies (29.3-32.6%) and number of HCWs enjoined in these policies were also small (4.5 and 4.6%, respectively). Based on these results, a model of BOHS provision to HCWs was developed and applied in HCFs in some provinces in Vietnam including provision of OSH trainings, working environment monitoring, periodic health checkup, occupational disease detection and improvement of working environment, etc.

Discussion
There were needs for expanding a model of BOHS provision to HCWs over the country