Tim Wörth was born in Mannheim and has been a Senior Company Doctor at Roche for almost four years. This had not initially been his plan, but today he is very satisfied with his work and deems Roche the perfect workplace. He is concerned with health protection and risk prevention in everyday working life. At the same time, he works as an acute physician and treats his patients.
Did you always want to be a Company Doctor?
No, I didn't plan on doing that at all. Since I've always been very scientifically oriented, I already knew in high school that I wanted to study medicine. After studying medicine at the University of Heidelberg, I became an internist and worked in emergency care, intensive care and anesthesia.
How did you get in touch with Roche?
At some point I wanted to be more active in preventive medicine. My motivation: to prevent and avoid accidents and illnesses. That's why occupational medicine was exactly what I was looking for. In 2011 I moved to an intercorporate service that provides occupational medicine primarily for small and medium-sized companies. From there I made my first contacts with Roche. In 2013 I had the chance to apply for the position of a Company Doctor at Roche and ultimately I got the job.
What exactly does occupational medicine entail?
That is something only few people know. Our main task is not to run the emergency service and treat people who come to our outpatient clinic because of physical complaints. We gladly treat our employees, but that only makes up about five percent of our daily business. In fact, we are primarily concerned with occupational medicine: we advise Roche as a company on what safe and healthy workplaces need to look like. In doing so, we deal with physical, chemical and biological hazards. At the same time, the modern working world has revealed new challenges, such as psychological issues, ergonomics, mobile working and the ageing of society. Are there any other services offered by the medical services? Health promotion is also very important to us: for example, we organise seminars on nutrition, exercise, consumption of stimulants, and stress. In addition, we offer our employees a range of compulsory and recommended preventive services. Preventive care, however, is also part of occupational medicine.
What is the difference between compulsory and recommended preventive care?
Recommended preventive care is voluntary. Every employee can, for example, receive advice on working at a computer screen. As the name suggests, the compulsory preventive care is a mandatory consultation for particularly hazardous activities. The employee can decide whether they wish to be examined. Nevertheless we offer the respective examinations.
