Occupational health in medical workers in the Murmansk region

Introduction. Maintaining the health in medical workers, given the social significance of their occupational activities, is one of the priority tasks of occupational medicine.

The aim. To identify trends in working conditions and in the occupational health status in medical workers in the Murmansk region in 1988–2023.

Materials and methods. We performed an analysis of production hazards and of all registered occupational ill-health cases (n = 73) in medical workers (n = 55) of the Murmansk region. The information came from the of the Federal Service for Supervision in Protection of the Rights of Consumer and Man Wellbeing social and hygienic monitoring “The population working conditions and occupational morbidity” and the regional occupational ill-health registry. The statistical analysis used the criteria of agreement (χ²) and approximation (R²), relative risk (RR) and 95% confidence interval (CI), Student’s t-test (Microsoft Excel 2016).

Results. Occupational diseases (OD) in healthcare workers were established to be caused by infectious factors (37.0%), harmful chemicals (28.8%), higher than permissible workload (31.5%) and vibration (2.7%). We revealed features of development, nosology, and prevalence of occupational diseases in health workers of three categories: in medical doctors, middle and junior personnel. Despite changes in the annual number of diseases and sick workers (from zero to 12 cases), both indicators demonstrated only a weak upward trend: R² = 0.025 and R² = 0.029. Over 1988–2023, the average occupational morbidity rate in health workers in the Murmansk region was 0.90 cases per 10,000 workers, which was 6–12 times less than in the region.

Limitations. The possibility of registering diseases that originated in the Murmansk region in other regions of Russia.

Conclusion. The newly established data on progress of pathological changes, nosology and morbidity rates can be used for updating prevention of occupational ill-health in medical workers of the Murmansk region.

Compliance with ethical standards. Ethics approval was not required for this study.

Contribution:
Syurin S.A. – study conception and design, data collection, manuscript writing;
Kovshov A.A. – analysis and interpretation of results, manuscript writing.
All authors are responsible for the integrity of all parts of the manuscript and approval of the manuscript final version

Conflict of interest. The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Funding. The study had no sponsorship.

Received: October 10, 2025 / Accepted: July 1, 2026 / Published: September 28, 2026

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