LETTER FROM THE EDITOR: You cannot boss occupational physicians and insurance physicians around

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Acting independently, according to one’s own insights: hooray for professional autonomy. This issue of TBV features a number of articles that throw a light on different aspects of this autonomy. The research article originating from the VU University Medical Center and the Dutch Research Center for Insurance Medicine (KVCG), shows the effect of training on the actions of insurance physicians working for the Institute for employee benefits (UWV). Training insurance physicians in the proper application of the protocol ‘Depression’, helps to decrease the variance of the assessments. Whether the assessments lead to more, or fewer, limitations must be the subject of further study. Joost van der Gulden and colleagues report that independent occupational physicians experience fewer restrictions to working in a professional manner than their colleagues employed by occupational health and safety services. For instance, independent OPs experience less interference from others telling them how to work. Sometimes one hears about OPs inconvenienced by case managers. These process managers coordinate the counselling of sickness absence, to the dissatisfaction of many OPs who think they can do better themselves. This issue contains an interview with ‘register case managers’. They try to explain that they are not an obstacle to the OP. They distance themselves explicitly from the improper counselling practices by unqualified or insufficiently qualified service providers. Register case managers state that they explain to employers the use and necessity of the deployment of occupational physicians. …