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In companies, occupational physicians often face with situations of use of psychotropic drugs among workers and there is no a clear method to assess these cases. There are some recommendations for average time away from work but depending on work conditions, physicians may incur due to misjudgment cause of particularities of each patient. Used as anxiolytics and hypnotics, benzodiazepines are some of the most prescribed drugs worldwide. They are considered safe to use, although some restrictions due to side effects related to depression of the central nervous system. The International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) is an approach from multiple perspectives of functioning and disability, providing bases for users to create models and study different aspects of this process. The objective of this study is developing a "core set" of functionality to allow doctors to make a medical decision based on more accurate data than their perception, thereby improving their professional performance.
Methods
Starting from the possible side effects of benzodiazepines, cited in the drug psychopharmacology, we developed a “core set” to cover all the domains of mental function. This was elected by consensus between psychiatrist and na occupational physician, considering what was important for a Professional performance.
Results
The following encodings were elected: b110 Functions of consciousness; b114-oriented functions; b140-functions of attention, psychomotor functions and b147-b156 functions-perception. For each function, we proposed a parameter in order to quantify the disability qualifier considering a range from none to complete disability, within the benchmarks set by ICF.
Discussion
The proposed core set has proved to be a tool of easy application and safe orientation, to support the medical decision in face of a work situation. Our proposal is implementing this tool on a larger scale to validate it.