Forms of disease and prevention strategies of Occupational Therapists

Introduction
The Occupational Therapists and other health professionals, develop activities that can take them to illness. This research aimed to answer the following research questions: What forms of illness by the work of occupational therapist? What are effective interventions for prevention of illness by the work of occupational therapist?

Methods
Integrative review was conducted in databases: Web of Knowledge, Medline, Scopus; Lilacs, Cochrane Library, PubMed and Embase. Inclusion criteria were articles published from 1986 to 2010, available in full text in Portuguese, English or Spanish. Selected articles were reviewed and classified according to level of evidence.

Results
Eleven articles attended the criteria. 72.8% articles dealt with the different diseases of the Occupational Therapist and 27.2% articles related to the prevention measures. All articles have quantitative methodological approach, being 9.0% quasi-experimental study, 18.3% literature review and 72.7% were cross-sectional study. 91.0% of articles were classified as weak evidence and 9.0% with moderate evidence.

Discussion
The Occupational Therapist has several ways of becoming ill through work, such as musculoskeletal disorders (dislocation, sprains, tenosynovitis, and carpal tunnel syndrome), dermatitis, asthma, stress, Burnout Syndrome, verbal aggression and physical violence. The articles are mostly from cross-cutting studies, which hinder the understanding of cause and effect of diseases. The protective measures and/or prevention were preventing skin diseases, washing hands to reduce transmission and contamination of microorganisms and coping strategies for Burnout Syndrome. Most studies evaluated the Occupational Therapist with other health professionals and in only article the Occupational Therapist was the only professional search. So there is a lack of the disease and preventive measures of these professionals and studies are need with strong scientific evidence, in other words, with more robust methodology. It is hoped that this study may contribute to future research in order to better understand the process of health/disease for these workers.