Solutions to long overtime work advised by occupational physician

We inquired 25 full-time occupational health physicians at exemplary Japanese companies regularly performing personal interview to workers who worked for long hours regarding their practical method of the interview and their experiences. We collected 96 good examples at 16 workplaces; advising medical treatments, shortening working hours, improving heavy workload other than working hours, advising solutions unrelated to workplaces, improving hazardous environment. Accurate recoding and strict limitation of overtime-work hours were primarily important to reduce overwork. We developed a homepage at http://www.oshdb.jp/ to publicize our study findings. We should emphasize the promotion of population approach targeting the overwork itself that will prevent occurrence of the health effects.