REVIEW

Occupational health needs of universities: a review with an emphasis on the United Kingdom

K M Venables¹, S Allender²

¹ University Lecturer in Occupational Medicine, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
² Research Fellow, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
K M Venables
Department of Public Health, University of Oxford, Rosemary Rue Building, Old Road Campus, Headington, Oxford OX3 7LF, UK; kate.venables{at}dphpc.ox.ac.uk

This study describes the needs of universities in relation to planning the provision of occupational health services, by detailing their occupational hazards and risks and other relevant factors. The paper presents the results of (1) an enquiry into publicly available data relevant to occupational health in the university sector in the United Kingdom, (2) a literature review on occupational health provision in universities, and (3) selected results from a survey of university occupational health services in the UK. Although the enquiry and survey, but not the literature review, were restricted to the UK, the authors consider that the results are relevant to other countries because of the broad similarities of the university sector between countries. These three approaches showed that the university sector is large, with a notably wide range of occupational hazards, and other significant factors which must be considered in planning occupational health provision for individual universities or for the sector as a whole.

Keywords: universities; occupational hazards; service provision; health services research

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This article has been cited by other articles:

• Venables, K. M., Allender, S. (2008). Quality of occupational health provision: two rating scales and their determinants. Occup Med (Lond) 58: 439-442 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
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