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In 1966 the term Ergophthalmology was created by the German ophthalmologist H.-J. Merté as the field covering “all interrelations between vision and work”. According to a European survey about 50% of all employees are “working with computers”. On the other hand even at “classical” workplaces computers and screens are part of the man-machine-interface, and other visual tasks are part of the job. The question is: did ergophthalmology in the course of the years passed really have an influence on the visual working conditions?
Methods
After the last ICOH congress we were interested in the ergophthalmological knowledge of ophthalmologists and occupational physicians. The results are disappointing, and visits to workplaces reflected this. So the question of effectiveness and even efficiency of our work came up. We started collecting all “relevant” information we could get and added our own findings. The result was a conglomeration between occupational physiology and social psychology of visual perception, between visual ergonomics and promotion of health, quality of life at the workplace and the output of work.
Results
As a consequence we saw that we would have to widen ergophthalmology in order to have a real chance to influence the working situation of visual work measurably.
We grouped the material, as follows:
o Problems of the “inner eyes” and the complexity of vision.
o Problems of the “outer eyes”: environmental and personal risk factors, dry eyes, etc.
o Special topics: vision and workload, stress, fatigue, asthenopia, ageing workforce, working with eye diseases.
o Methodology: parameters and their measurement, data handling.
o Ideas for assessing the chances for sustainable influence.
Discussion
It is not at all sufficient if we do our work in an honest scientific way and that we limit ourselves to the prevention of occupational eye problems. What we need is a much broader field of competence, oriented towards efficiency, effectiveness and sustainability.