Session 114 Do you know what Occupational Medicine is? Although the specialty has been around for a long time, it’s not very well-known. If you like variety and a detective type of work in exploring what could be causing someone to be ill, Occupational Medicine is an amazing specialty you should check out. Dr. Jacqueline Moline is an Occupational Medicine specialist in an academic setting. She’s here today to help us understand what they do, why such specialty is very important, as well as the ins and outs of the specialty. If you’re a premed student, please do check out all of our other podcasts on the Meded Media. Listen to this podcast episode with the player above, or keep reading for the highlights and takeaway points. [01:50] What is Occupational Medicine? Jacqueline didn't know about Occupational Medicine when she was in medical school. She first got interested in the specialty during her Internal Medicine residency program. She had the opportunity to rotate through and meet with faculty. At that point, she thought it was the career choice that appealed to her. Occupational Medicine is a discipline that deals with how the work environment can affect health. It's a global type of specialty in the sense that you have to have an understanding of what the person does, workplace hazards, and how the body is going to be affected. Jacqueline explains that occupational medicine involves not only treating the "what's" but also the why's." They can treat your "what" but they also need to understand "why" you have this. What can they do to identify what might be causing it? For instance, an adult presents to you with new-onset or a sudden exacerbation of their childhood asthma. The first question they would ask is what are you exposed to know that you weren't exposed to before? So they can treat your asthma and give you the appropriate inhalers or whatever medications needed. But they're also concerned with identifying why you have it. If they can identify why you have it and work in a way to avoid that exposure then you don't have asthma anymore.  Just a little backstory here. I used to work as a flight surgeon in the Air Force and we deal with Occupational Medicine all the time. We evaluate the mechanics working on planes and the paint shops where they're dealing with all these chemicals. Occupational Medicine is a specialty within Preventive Medicine. If you can identify the hazard, you can prevent it. [Related episode: What is Preventive Medicine? A Look at Academic Prev Med] [06:35] Occupational Medicine as a Residency and Fellowship Occupational Medicine is a residency/fellowship. It's called a residency because technically you only need to do an internship and then join the two-year training program. Or it can be called a fellowship if you have done three years of training in Internal Medicine or Family Medicine. She wanted to get the additional training because she wanted to learn more about the things she didn't know about like toxicology, epidemiology, etc. You could actually play several roles as an Occupational Medicine specialist. You could have a policy role or work to help foster new policies in the federal or state government. You could work for a large corporation or be in academia. You could work in a clinical practice and do clinical Occupational Medicine all the time. Moreover, Jacqueline wanted to know how to take an occupational history and practice it because this wasn't something they had time for in internal medicine due to time demands. [08:05] Traits that Lead to Becoming a Good Occupational Medicine Specialist Curiosity is important. Try to figure out what's going on. Often, you're like a detective. It's going back to being really curious and just asking questions and having an open mind. [10:12] Types of Patients Jacqueline works in an academic setting and has a more specialized practice. She sees patients who've had asbestos exposure or patients were exposed 30-60 years prior. Then they've developed