The teaching of occupational health in US medical schools: little improvement in 9 years.

A questionnaire survey of the 127 US medical schools was undertaken to assess the present status of occupational health teaching as a follow-up to two prior similar studies. The present study revealed that 78 (68%) of the 115 responding schools specifically taught occupational health during the 1991/92 academic year, in comparison with 50% in the 1977/78 and 66% in the 1982/83 academic years. The median required curriculum time was 6 hours in 1991/92, as compared with 4 hours in both previous surveys. Despite the increasing recognition of occupational health and growth of information in this field of medicine, occupational health teaching to medical students has not progressed proportionately.