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on 12/4/08 7:46 am, Chris Packham at [log in to unmask] wrote: As an outsider may I express a certain concern about all that I have seen in connection with the Black report on this forum recently? It seems to be a long and involved discussion about rehabilitation as the basis for the future of occupational health. Rehabilitation assumes that the person has become ill, presumably through his or her occupation. If dealing with that situation is to be the main focus of occupational health, then I am pessimistic about the future for occupational health. I was always of the opinion that occupational health had as its main aim the prevention of damage to health so that rehabilitation becomes an exception. If occupational health does not effectively address this aspect then someone else (IOSH/IIRSM?) will step in and fill the gap. Moreover, from the employer's viewpoint, prevention is much more interesting as it keeps the worker productive and is therefore more attractive from the financial aspect. It isn't so long ago that in a factory visit I had a manager say to me: "We don't have a real nurse any more." Knowing that the new OH nurse had a degree and considerable experience I asked why he felt this. His response: "The new one is never in her clinic. We always new that the previous one was there - and she wore a uniform." In my view the new one was doing what an occupational health practitioner should be doing - out in the workplace ensuring that what was being done there did not put health at risk. I wonder how many managers still have this attitude. Forget Black and concentrate on those who employ the workers and are ultimately responsible for their health and wellbeing, i.e. the senior management in organisations. Unless you have these on board, occupational health will always struggle. These are the people who will actually open up the budget and provide you with the finance and support to achieve what occupational health should be achieving. Now for my final point. How many occupational health practitioners receive the necessary training to ensure that they can persuade senior managers that investing in occupational health is good business practice for them? Is marketing/selling occupational health in the curriculum? If not, would it not be a good idea to provide some insight into this important skill? Chris Hello Chris It isn't really surprising that the Black report focuses on rehab. The report comes from the Dept of Work and Pension, they will want to save money on benefit payments. It goes without saying that good OH practice is more than dealing with a person when they become sick or injured and the emphasis must be on prevention, facilitation of the employment of people with special needs and disabilities, compliance with a raft of legislative requirements including risk assessments and health surveillance etc etc etc. At least the Black report is a start. It is worth noting that Dame Carol is highly regarded as a medic (past president of the Royal College of Physicians) unfortunately she is not an OH physician. Where I think Dame Carol missed a trick is that she did not make a recommendation to Govt that not only should it be a statutory requirement to make provision for H&S it should also be a statutory requirement for every employer to provide access to an occ health service, and not just for statutory health surveillance. That OH service could be in house or available through an external provider. I agree with your point re business issues and persuading senior management that good health is good business (now where have I read that before?). The NMC standard for the curriculum for OHNs as Specialist Community Public Health Nurses is far from perfect. Unfortunately there is no requirement to teach business issues. To my mind that is an important component of an OH course as OH practitioners have to demonstrate they add value to their organisation. Courses we have offered at LSBU have included this for quite a few years. (I would like to be able to offer even more, perhaps shared learning with managers and HR professionals - Don't think I would ever get backing for that though.) The LSBU course must have hit the spot as several of our graduates have set up their own very successful consultancies - they have been able to demonstrate their value to prospective and current clients otherwise they would not get business. One of our graduates has scooped several business awards. Two of our graduates each won their category at the recent OH awards run by OH Journal. Unfortunately, no OH course is perfect., The content of SCPHN programmes mean that there is a requirement to have core material which is also offered to health visitors (HVs) and school nurses (SNs). This limits the amount of pathway specific material which can be included. Some universities only have one OH specific unit, others have far more. Institutions can include as much or as little OH specialist material as they like and still be able to demonstrate compliance with NMC standards providing they can convince an NMC representative that the standards have been met. There is no guarantee that that person is an OH practitioner nor that they understand anything about OH. Prior to the establishment of the NMC the English National Board validated programmes. Their representative which attended a panel when I was at the RCN was a children's nurse. The NMC undertake ongoing QA visits. The last "inspection" we had was undertaken by a health visitor and a district nurse. Anne ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Please remove this footer before replying. OCC-HEALTH ARCHIVES: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/occ-health.html CONFERENCES AND STUDY DAYS: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/filearea.cgi?LMGT1=OCC-HEALTH OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH JOBS http://OHJobs.drmaze.net OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH NURSING EDUCATION http://www.aohne.org.uk