What is an Occupational Health Nurse?
Do you want to monitor and maintain health within a more industrial workplace? Perhaps you’re interested in working with businesses to assess the risk factors within an organization. If so, you might consider Occupational Health Nursing.
Occupational Health Nurses (OHN)s are registered nurses who work independently to observe and determine a worker’s health status depending on his/her respective job tasks and hazards. With incredibly specialized experience and education, Occupational Health Nurses recognize and prevent extremely damaging health effects from hazardous exposures in the workplace and treat workers’ resulting injuries and illnesses.
Those who strive to become Occupational Health Nurses will become a sort of investigator of workplaces and must be able to observe and assess the health condition of the worker and the overall medical safety of the workplace environment. In addition, OHNs must be able to evaluate and interpret employee medical and occupational histories, prior medical complaints, screening tests, and personal health values to gauge how to go about creating the safest workplace conditions.
Occupational Health Nurses will examine a work environment for potential dangerous exposures and lethal abnormalities with regards to structure or surrounding area. After examination, OHNs are responsible for providing a detailed description of how workers will react to such abnormalities, and may be called on to treat occupational injury and document the injury or illness for future and further inspection.
On average, Occupational Health Nurses earn between $49,000 and $50,000 per year. OHNs are required to go through the standard nurse licensing procedure and they will often work independently of a hospital and directly with business and industries, especially concerning industrial complexes.
If you want to step into the business world and work on a more analytical and independent level, then Occupational Health Nursing could be just the profession for you!
