A practical guide for the use of research information to improve the quality of occupational health practice: for occupational & public health professionals

ABSTRACT

We, the editors, have both been trained as occupational physicians and occupational epidemiologists. We conducted occupational cohort studies to find out causes of ill health at work. The work of Sackett and colleagues raised our interest in other applications of epidemiology how to use scientific evidence in professional practice. Their work showed that epidemiology was much more widely applicable in practical daily occupational health care than in occupational cohort studies only. Methods of clinical epidemiology can be usefully applied. After attending a course on Evidence-based Medicine (ebm) we became enthusiastic about the possibilities of applying ebm to our field. It turned out that there was a lot of research-based knowledge, information or evidence, whatever you like to call it, available in the scientific literature that has practical value. We judged this as a most interesting extension of our traditional sources of information such as text books or experts' opinion. For us, it has been much fun to do and very instructive to learn. Since much of the information is available free of charge through the Internet, everyone with Internet access can use it. With this book we hope that we can convey our optimistic experience so far to other occupational health professionals...(AU)