Saturday, May 10, 2008

Occupational Health Nurses focus is on promoting and restoring health, preventing injury and illness and protecting workers from occupational and environmental hazards। The primary objectives include: Prevention of work-related illness and injuries through a systematic process of assessment, data collection, planning, intervention and evaluation; evaluation and treatment of work-related injury or illness; promotion of health and safety activities among workers; advocacy within the workplace in terms of environmental concerns as they relate to the workers; development and maintenance of an adequate record system। Health care screening includes a systematic assessment, the measuring of vital signs, educating, treating, or referring a worker to a specialist।
The medical staff comprises of only one occupational nurse who promotes
wellness in a work place by providing preventive health screening, immunizations, travel inoculations and post-travel screenings for infectious diseases which are given to those who travel overseas to high-risk places. Employees also receive yearly vaccinations at the health care unit.
She has to be an excellent clinician, since an occupational health nurse also provides a first-line response and emergency treatment. Independent thinking is required, since a lot of times she will be the only one responding to a situation. She must have a full range of first-response on-site equipment, which is kept in a state of readiness at all times.
There are shelves of procedure manuals, as well as rules of practice. An occupational nurse has to have a very good working knowledge of all regulatory agencies governing the working place such as FDA, OSHA, DOH, DOT. These rules and regulations are strictly followed. The Nurse Practice Act is strictly adhered to at all times to protect the company and employees. All emergencies are very well documented. An emphasis is made on the nurse’s notes and other documentation to be precise and accurate, in order to minimize litigations and lost work time by assuring that the person comes back to work as soon as possible.
There are two filing systems. One- is a paper system where every action of the nurse gets recorded in a written manner (by the nurse), and gets filed away into a workers health folder, in a filing cabinet. Then it’s stored as data on a computer.
Each occupational health unit is geared toward meeting the needs of the working environment that contains it. The health care unit setting of Siac Inc. is aimed at taking care of employees in a very fast-paced, high-stress corporate world. Such environment negatively affects people’s psychological and physical health, resulting in a multitude of problems, such as Myocardial infarctions, hypertensive incidents and strokes. A lot of times there is no chance for a lunch break, which inevitably increases risks of a hypoglycemia in a diabetic person.
Psychological impact is very common, including insomnia, anxiety and pervious breakdowns. These health problems are often not diagnosed until they had been negatively affecting a person for a very long time. Stress and fast-paced environment is also probably a major factor in illegal substance abuse by employees. In case of a fall, an employee is assessed and either treated and sent home in a car service or transported to a nearest hospital by an ambulance. http://www.PassNurseExams.com

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