Avances metodológicos para la determinación del origen de enfermedades laborales relacionadas con el estrés: la experiencia colombiana

Abstract

Background: The inclusion of stress-related diseases in the Colombian legislation raised the need for tools that facilitate the assessment of cases in a standardized manner. Objective: To design a homogeneous and valid method for analysis, evaluation and establishment of causal relationships between psychosocial exposures at work and occurrence of diseases among the working population. Method: The protocol comprises seven consecutive steps from the verification of the diagnosis to assessment of psychosocial and non-psychosocial risk factors, which are scored on a valuation matrix that allows estimating the relative weight of each of them. Results: The protocol was validated with a set of cases of diseases possibly related with stress at work. General sensitivity and specificity indicators were calculated, as well as the ones particular for each disease included in the protocol. Conclusions: The Labor Ministry of Colombia established the protocol described here as mandatory reference for assessment teams at the various social security levels. Its relevance and applicability were assessed after ten years of use, and the process to update its supporting evidence was started.