Interventions to increase the reporting of occupational diseases by physicians

Background Under‐reporting of occupational diseases is an important issue worldwide. The collection of reliable data is essential for public health officials to plan intervention programmes to prevent occupational diseases. Little is known about the effects of interventions for increasing the reporting of occupational diseases. Objectives To evaluate the effects of interventions aimed at increasing the reporting of occupational diseases by physicians. Search methods We searched the Cochrane Occupational Safety and Health Group Specialised Register, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), MEDLINE (PubMed), EMBASE, OSH UPDATE, Database of s of Reviews of Effects (DARE), OpenSIGLE, and Health Evidence until January 2015. We also checked reference lists of relevant articles and contacted study authors to identify additional published, unpublished, and ongoing studies. Selection criteria We included randomised controlled trials (RCTs), cluster‐RCTs (cRCTs), controlled before‐after (CBA) studies, and interrupted time series (ITS) of the effects of increasing the reporting of occupational diseases by physicians. The primary outcome was the reporting of occupational diseases measured as the number of physicians reporting or as the rate of reporting occupational diseases. Data collection and analysis Pairs of authors independently assessed study eligibility and risk of bias and extracted data. We expressed intervention effects as risk ratios or rate ratios. We combined the results of similar studies in a meta‐analysis. We assessed the overall quality of evidence for each combination of intervention and outcome using the GRADE approach. Main results We included seven RCTs and five CBA studies. Six studies evaluated the effectiveness of educational materials alone, one study evaluated educational meetings, four studies evaluated a combination of the two, and one study evaluated a multifaceted educational campaign for increasing the reporting of occupational diseases by physicians. We judged all the included studies to have a high risk of bias. We did not find any studies evaluating the effectiveness of Internet‐based interventions or interventions on procedures or techniques of reporting, or the use of financial incentives. Moreover, we did not find any studies evaluating large‐scale interventions like the introduction of new laws, existing or new specific disease registries, newly established occupational health services, or surveillance system