[Present condition of health information control and attitudes of occupational health professionals in collecting and utilizing health information in workplaces].

Since the Labor Safety and Health Law of Japan provides that the employer is responsible for taking custody of personal information obtained in periodic health examinations, we are anxious about infringement of privacy. This study was conducted to investigate the present condition of health information control in each workplace and attitudes of occupational health professionals in collecting and utilizing personal health information by means of self-administered mail questionnaires. The numbers of respondents were a total of 549 (physicians: 237, public health nurses: 175, nurses 122, others & unknown: 15). The major results were as follows. 1. Percentage of workplaces in which only health professionals can know personal health data from periodic health examinations was 24% altogether, but it was 39% in large workplaces where full-time occupational physicians were working. 2. More than half of the respondents were of the opinion that the results of routine health activities could be presented in academic conferences unconditionally or under comprehensive approval of the representative of each workplace. 3. About a half of the respondents believed that it was necessary to consider the intention of each examinee in utilizing blood specimen collected at health examinations for research purposes, even though personal identification had been erased. 4. There were many differences among types of occupation or age groups in the attitude to changing the procedure for health examination. And it was the majority opinion that personal health data provided to the employer should be the minimum in order to protect individual benefits. 5. The proportion of physicians who felt it necessity to ask about the occupational history at the employment health examination was significantly higher than that of public health nurses. 6. When a disease was discovered, there were great differences among types of disease in the attitude to give the name or condition of the disease to the employer without the consent of the patient or his family. In view of these results, we feel that occupational health professionals are in a dilemma in introducing modern ideas which lay stress on privacy into the Japanese occupational health care system which is still operating on the basis of traditional paternalism.