The teaching of occupational and environmental medicine to medical students in Australia and New Zealand

All the medical schools in Australia and New Zealand were surveyed in order to determine the amount of teaching devoted to occupational and environmen tal medicine in the medical courses in 1998. A 100% response rate was achie ved. The results showed that the number of hours devoted to these topics va ried widely. but averaged 12.8 h and 10.5 topics. The most significant fact or accounting for the variability was the presence on the universities' tea ching staff of individuals trained in the practice of occupational medicine . While our findings show a greater time devoted to these topics than those of similar studies in the United States and Britain, the absolute time rem ains small when compared with the prevalence of occupational medicine probl ems in the community. There is little congruence in terms of both content a nd assessment processes between schools.