Title
Agreement on medical fitness for a job
Author
Medisch Biologisch Laboratorium TNO
de Kort, W.L.A.M.
Post Uiterweer, H.W.
van Dijk, F.J.H.
Publication year
1992
Abstract
Five experienced occupational physicians independently reviewed the uniformly structured, concise records of 180 applicants who had applied for a job in one of three categories. All had undergone a pre-employment medical examination by the Governmental Occupational Health and Safety Service. Agreement was assessed by calculating the percentage of disagreement and Cohen's kappa. Agreement between the five panel physicians and between the panel physicians and the Service appeared to be poor, with overall percentages of disagreement of 31 and 37%, respectively, and kappa values of 0.38 and 0.37, respectively. On the average 31% of the applicants judged as unfit by one physician had been assessed as fit by the others, whereas agreement was only marginally better when detailed medical criteria for fitness were available. Lack of consensus on the medical fitness of an applicant, as evidenced by this study, suggests that the validity of such a judgment may be questionable even when detailed fitness criteria are available. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Subject
Health policy
Interobserver variability
Kappa statistic
Occupational health care
Personnel selection
Pre-employment medical examination
accuracy
fitness
health care policy
major clinical study
normal human
occupational health
occupational physician
personnel
preemployment medical examination
variance
work
Adult
Female
Human
Male
Observer Variation
Occupational Diseases
Physical Examination
Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Work Capacity Evaluation
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TNO identifier
231752
ISSN
0355-3140
Source
Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment and Health, 18 (18), 246-251
Document type
article