Collaboration between occupational health services and other health care: a scoping review

Abstract

Background: Occupational health services play an important role in supporting employees’ work ability and co-ordinating rehabilitation processes. However, they may operate quite separately from other health care systems, and the level of the collaboration between occupational health services and other health care varies across different countries. We aimed to evaluate how the co-operation between occupational health care and other health care providers has been studied. Methods: This study was a scoping review. The literature search examined the databases of Scopus, Ovid Medline and Cinahl for original studies of collaboration between occupational health services and other social and health services from 2012 to 2022. The articles were evaluated on the basis of actor and form of collaboration. Results: Out of the 1008 articles we found, 26 articles met our inclusion criteria. After searching the reference lists of the included articles, we chose seven more articles, resulting in a total of 33 articles for our scoping review. The articles were categorized according to the main actors of collaboration into seven groups: (1) collaboration between occupational health physicians (OP) and general physicians, (2) collaboration between OPs and rehabilitation physicians, (3) collaboration between OPs and psychotherapists, (4) collaboration between occupational health physiotherapists and general physiotherapists, (5) collaboration between occupational health professionals (OHP) and general health professionals, (6) collaboration between OHPs and specialized health care professionals and (7) collaboration between OHPs and other work-related stakeholders. Conclusions: The existing research on the collaboration between occupational health services and other health care appears to be mostly descriptive, highlighting the need for intervention studies of collaboration models.