“Reduce the burden on general practitioners”

The industrial occupational health service inaugurated its new center in Kockelscheuer this Monday, November 11, where the challenge is to prevent accidents and occupational illnesses before curing them.

As he approaches his 30th birthday on December 19, the sIndustry Occupational Health Service (STI) gets a breath of fresh air with a new building inaugurated yesterday has cockroach, as well as with a change of direction.

Last October, Irina Minyem became medical director of the STI. In office since 2018 and member of the steering committee for three years, the new figure sheds light on the role of his service, the offering of which has expanded since its founding in 1994 by Fedil (Federation of Luxembourg Industrialists).

What is the role of the STI?

Dr Irina Minyem: We receive people from industry, construction or business services companies and our role is preventive in nature. The doctors who work at the STI are occupational physicians. It is a specialty in its own right which requires four years of study after the common core, where we acquire notions of ergonomics and toxicology.

Before, we said occupational medicine, but now it is occupational health, because we are multidisciplinary. There are not only doctors, but several trades at the STI. We have nurses, ergonomists, prevention technicians and even psychologists.

And our role is preventive in nature, that is to say we intervene before the general practitioner has to do so. The idea is to prevent people from becoming ill as a result of their professional activity.

We then carry out examinations upon hiring, before people take up their jobs or just after. It is an obligatory visit. Then, the frequency of visits depends on the workstation and the risks encountered at this workstation.

What is the difference between a visit to an STI doctor and a general practitioner?

We are still a little more equipped than general medicine, because we do a lot of tests for prevention, whether visual, hearing, respiratory tests or blood tests. Otherwise, the medical examination remains a classic medical examination where we mainly target the problems which could arise in relation to the workstations.

Following a consultation with the STI, can an employee take sick leave?

It's more complicated than that. The occupational physician bases his work on the state of health which he must correlate with the workplace. You can have an illness that has no impact on the position you hold and vice versa, so there are several cases. It is not the employee who decides whether or not he can stay at his workstation.

Before making a decision, you must question the person, take their feelings, look at their state of physical and mental health as well as base yourself on the medical elements that they have provided and which are carried out by general practitioner colleagues or by others. specialists.

Are the employees you see well aware of all the health risks present at work?

Not always, but it is our role to explain it to them, so our nurses do it when they carry out tests and we complete the information when we see them in consultation. We also have a website, where we regularly post prevention information, as well as an ergonomist and a prevention technician. Everyone contributes their part so that prevention takes precedence over cure. If we do our job well, then we must reduce the burden on general practitioners.