Occupational health nurses’ perceptions of their current and future roles

Abstract

Education programmes will need to address specifically the knowledge and skills required for wellness-based models of practice in occupational health nursing, as well as research and negotiating skills for working with others in the workplace.

Core competencies for UK occupational health nurses: a Delphi study

“…Our findings are consistent with previous studies [15,17,20,23], with ‘good clinical care’ and ‘communication skills’ being high priorities and ‘research’ a lower priority. In a global survey of OH professionals for OHNs, ‘clinically focused’ competencies were the skills most frequently noted.…”

“…Scores for research were low relative to other OH professionals and few countries identified basic research as part of a nurse’s expected role [15]. In two Australian studies [20,23], OHNs saw ‘traditional role’ (clinically based) activities as more applicable to their practice rather than ‘emergent role’ activities such as health promotion, education and training and research. Our findings also highlight some correlation between OHN and employer perspectives with effective communication also high on employers’ priority lists and research considered least important [17].…”

“…OHN roles and competencies have been the subject of research [15–23]. Two Australian studies [20,23] identified that OHNs were not engaging fully in all practice areas defined in their competency standards. More traditional roles (e.g.…”

“…Managing an OH service was the only emergent activity identified as a substantial part of the OHN’s role. A lack of involvement in research was highlighted [20] and another study related this to a lack of skills in, and knowledge of, research methods [16]. In a global survey of OH professionals [15], clinically focused competencies were the skills most frequently considered necessary for OHNs, with lower scores for research.…”

Tactile massage and hypnosis as a health promotion for nurses in emergency care-a qualitative study

“…Consequently, in retrospect, individually conducted interviews might have been a better methodological strategy to facilitate higher personnel participation and to gain deeper understanding of the personnel's reported experiences and perceptions. Previous studies including participation in health promotion models show an equally low response rate of 22-30% in nursing personnel, but in those studies no explanation was given to this fact [30,31]. Additional limitations included difficulties in identifying the participants on tape which resulted in quotations named from each focus group and not from a certain participant or in relation to the specific type of health promotion intervention the participant had received.…”