The industrial health education is the most fundamental and active area in the industrial health. It has become increasingly recognized as an important component of preventive occupational health programs and is an essential service for improvement of productivity and employee´s health.
Evaluating the worker´s health status is a part of the occupational health promotion policy and is very important to know the efficiency of the occupational health service.
In this point, the purpose of this study was to clarify the effect of the industrial health education on worker´s health status. This study included a survey of 625 workers at 28 factories in Puchon area form August 27 to September 30, 1996. The research was carried out through the analysis of the self-administered questionnaires and health examination records.
The result s were as follows:
1. For demographic characteristics, 66.5% of the respondents were male. The most prevalent age group was 30 - 39 years group(30.4%). Those who graduated from high school were 43.5%. The workers whose monthly income ranged from 600,000 to 100,000 won were 40.3%. As for the marital status, 69.4% of the respondents were married.
2. For occupational characteristics, 37.9% of the workers had worked 2 to 5 years in the factories, 69.4% of the respondents worked at the assembly line and the staffs were 27.0%. T26.4% of the respondents worked at hazardous workplace and 71.8% of the workers worked 9 to 10 hours a day. Those who worked during the night were 56.0% Those who felt much for them workload were 29.9% and were dissatisfied with their environment and job were 33.6%, 19.1%.
3. The 39.4% of the respondents received the industrial health education and most of them received on the safety and only few on family health. 70.7% out of those who had industrial health education reported it helped their management.
4. The health status was evaluated by perceived health status and the health grade investigated by health examination record. For the perceived health status of respondents, 41.0% answered they were healthy. And for the health status inspected by health grade, A, B, the healthy were 70.0% and C, D1, D2, the unhealthy were 30.0%.
5. Perceived health status showed significant difference among the different age group(p<0.05). For health status by health grade, more workers were unhealthy as their age and monthly income went up. The more educated and married workers were healthier than the less educated and unmarried. The differences were statistically significant.
The health status according to health grade showed differences according to their working duration, workplace, working hours a day and job satisfaction. As their working duration got longer the more workers were unhealthy(p<0.01), more workers at hazardous workplace were unhealthy than others(p<0.0001). Longer working hours a day and dissatisfaction on the job caused unhealthiness of the workers. All the above differences were statistically significant.
6. The workers who received industrial health education perceived to be healthy than those who did not receive. And this difference was statistically significant(p<0.001). There was no relation between the receiving of health education and the health grade. But after controlling the effect of workplace on the health grade, there were more healthy workers among those who received industrial health education compared to those who didn´t And this difference was statistically significant(p<0.05).
7. Out of 10 subjects on the health education, workers those who had the education on safety, health habit were healthier(A, B) than those who didn´t and the difference was statistically significant.
8. To designated the factors influencing workers´ health status, logistic regression analysis has been done. According to the results of this analysis, the experience of health education and wearing the protective devices were selected as significant factors associated with the perceived health status. The workers who received industrial health education perceived their health to be good than uneducated with a 2.69 odds ratio(p<0.001). And experience health education had the most influencing on perceived health status.
Receiving health education, education level, workplace and job satisfaction had statistically significant associations with good health status investigated by health grade. The workers who worked at general workplace were health than those who worked at hazardous with a 2.07 odds ratio(p<0.01). The health educated workers had a good health status than uneducated with a 1.62 odds ratio(p<0.05).
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