The Role Of the Occupational Health Nurse

Basic nursing education, concerned as it is with the human being, lays a foundation for a nursing professional who can make a unique contribution to the health of the working population. Due to the nurse’s direct access to workers, often on a daily basis, the nurse becomes the first point of contact for many health-related questions and problems. Workers will readily seek advice from an approachable, accessible health care professional that consciously makes the time to talk to them about their concerns. Occupational health nurses are skilled listeners and because of their independent role can often gather information from both management and staff, and help to seek the common ground between both when they are discussing matters related to health, social wellbeing and quality of working lives. This can also cause a conflict of interest within a personal /professional relationship. For example a mature female employee has had intermittent absences from her production line employment in a bakery, over the past month. The employee confides with the in-house occupational health nurse, that she has recently started HRT treatment and often feels flush and faint in the heat of her work environment. Her Male manager wants to know the reason and will not settle with a diagnosis of “personal problems”. He states if he can’t have a medical reason he will have to take disciplinary action. What do you do? Obviously a break in confidentiality will devalue the trust of the employee in the nurse. The manager may need to be trained in the medical ethics within occupational health. There is not one answer to this dilemma. In best practice, open communication and respect for confidential information would be a good place to build a three way relationship between nurse, manager and employee.

Questions asked of an occupational health nurse often go far beyond the traditional remit of occupational health. Workers will seek advice from their occupational health nurse on matters such as, whether they or their spouse should seek attention for some non work related condition, or ask how to access the best advice possible to help them resolve a health issue or personal problem at home, or may raise concerns about the health or safety performance of their managers or colleagues at work. Whilst these issues are not directly related to work, an emerging view is that any concerns that the worker has about his own, or others, health is relevant if it might affect his ability to concentrate, attend, or perform well at work and by providing early advice and intervention long term problems can be avoided.

The occupational health nurse needs to be able to respond to a wide range of questions and health related issues if they are to meet the needs of workers and some of this will be by having established close contacts with other nursing specialists in the community. One of the unique characteristics in the role of the occupational health nurse is that the nurse is present at the place of work, readily accessible to the worker on the day that they have a problem. The workers know that the occupational health nurse is concerned with protecting and promoting the health of people at work, and therefore they do not need to have a specific ‘medical complaint’ in order to see the nurse or ask advice. Early intervention, providing the right advice and being in a position to support the worker can help to overcome many obstacles and because of the occupational health nurses close involvement with the working community, often over many years, they are in a good position to help workers return to work and normal functioning after a prolonged illness.

Source by Craig Michael Page

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