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Healing the living rather than righting the wrongs: The organization of hospital medicine and the underreporting of occupational hemopathies Volume 40, issue 1, Mars 2022

Authors
* Chargé de recherche, CSO-CNRS, 19, rue Amélie, 75007 Paris, France
** Directeur de recherche, CSO-CNRS, 19, rue Amélie, 75007 Paris, France
*** Maître de conférences, IRIS-USPN, Campus Condorcet, Bâtiment Recherche Sud, bureau 2079, 5 cours des Humanités, 93322 Aubervilliers, France

Workers’ compensation schemes for occupational diseases give doctors the role of key intermediaries. However, the latter are very little involved in the reporting of these diseases, thus contributing to their under-recognition. While the lack of training and the social distance between doctors and patients are frequently invoked to explain this low level of engagement, here we propose to place it in the broader framework of the organizational logics that structure care activities. Drawing on a qualitative and quantitative survey of a hospital specialty (hematology), we show how hospital organization limits doctors’ ability to identify and report work-related diseases.