제조업 분야 근로자의 진폐증 사후관리 실태

Abstract

Most of the pneumoconiosis, which is common occupational diseases, is found here in Korea can be categorized to coal miner's pneumoconiosis. However, recently pneumoconiosis has been found in the workers of manufacturing factories. Periodic health examination is important not only detection of occupational disease but also post-examination health care of occupational disease patient. Accordingly, to study post-examination health care status of workers with pneumoconiosis diagnosed from 1991 to 1993 in the periodic health examination, all 43 pneumoconiosis patients in 22 manufacturing factories in Incheon were reviewed. Chest radiologic findings of 43 workers were suspected pneumoconiosis (20 workers, 46.5%), pneumoconiosis stage I (20 workers, 46.5%) and pneumoconiosis stage Ⅱ(3 workers, 7.0%). Among the respondents, 40 workers (93.0%) answered that they received their health examination results and 24 workers (55.8%) had reguest for compensation of occupational disease. Only 14 workers(32.6%) had changed their workplace while 21 workers(48.8%) did not. Reasons for not taking the post-examination health care enough were worker's ignorance of adminstrative process for compensation (28 workers, 65.1%), mild status of disease (6 workers. 14.0%) and financial problem (3 workers, 7.0%). Post-examination health care of the workers diagnosed as pneumoconiosis had significant correlation with the presence of health care manager in workplace and the employer concerns for occupational disease of workers. The improvement of working environment is related with the presence of labor union in workplace. These results suggested that the presence of health care manager in the workplace and concerns for workers health by employer were important in performing appropriate post-examination health care for workers with pneumoconiosis in manufacturing factories.