Continuing Medical Education Programs for Oilfield Health Personnel: Strategy to Improve Solving Capacities On-site and Strengthen the Emergency Response Plan

摘要

In this paper, continuing medical education (CME) programs for oilfield health personnel should be understood to be any (postgraduate) process of education, training, and updating of petroleum health professionals in the field of health care (occupational health, preventive medicine, and clinical and surgical performance) aiming to improve knowledge, skills, and attitudes. In the petroleum industry, adequate response in cases of simple medical problems or complex emergencies is essential due to extreme working conditions and environments, particularly in field scenarios. Oil-field workers could feel confident regarding health issues, depending the real capability to solve and handle, at least initially, any health problem by their field doctors or other health personnel. In this context, CME could play an important role in increasing their problem-solving capabilities and become an important tool that brings together occupational health topics, preventive medicine, and clinical–surgical performance issues for health teams working in extreme conditions. Routine preventive activities could be as strong as reactive medical measures. Also, if commonly applied, oilfield companies could secure some additional values such as standardized procedures and medical field requirements (by region or country), case management, and adequate treatments for common on-site medical problems, etcetera. Currently, these requirements may vary largely among companies and contractors within the same country or region, making it difficult to operate efficiently on a timesaving basis when an urgent work is required, or securing the optimal use of resources-including the emergency response plan (ERP)- for the best health performance.These programs could be designed centrally (for common and oilfield relevant health topics) but also should arise as local demands, considering the need to solve real problems field health personnel face in their daily duties. So, it seems reasonable to believe that the final positive impact of CME oilfield industry programs could support more efficient, comprehensive, integrated, and holistic medical services.