Re: Companies that hire... Originally Posted by brissygal 
What certificate do they require? I am guessing a Occupational Health & Safety certificate. I wonder if a masters degree in Public health would be sufficient?
Cheers
Thank you for your inquiry.
Each country has its own licensing requirements, I would imagine. Here in the USA a certificate in Occupational Nursing is available at some colleges/universities. I haven't gotten one and was hired (?"grandmothered in"? due to my earlier experience doing it, before the certificates were available.
Experience helps, and some large Occupational Health departments will hire assistants for the Occupational Health Nurse. Usually the office for that is included with Human Resources/Personnel.
A Masters' Degree in Public Health might scare off a small employer who has a small budget for the position. However, hospitals connected to a University will usually prefer someone with the highest degree of education (and hopefully some experience).
Somehow in the several positions I've had doing it, the prior nurse in that position wasn't available or had little time to orient me to it, so I looked at the overall expectations, prioritized them, called schools with programs in Occupational Health Nursing, and begged for information. Then I set up a program that was appropriate.
Once disability insurance claims became necessary when someone was ill or injured on the job, I had some pressure from my employer and the insurance company's investigator for the facility where I worked, to discover reasons why their injury/illness may nor be as severe as it was presented. Always cover yourself, and in exposure to body fluid incidences get tests done for HIV antigen and hepatitis C and check the HepB Ab titer if someone had their immunization. If that marker is gone, give them a booster for Hep B. Also get their written permission to check with other places they were employed to get information about other exposures and the results......
When I initiated a hospital immunization for free HepB, just after that vaccine came out, I got good advice from the nurse who had the job before me, to get HepB Ab tests done on everyone before giving them the vaccine (that expense was more than made up by those who already had antibodies and didn't require the series of 3 innoculations - mostly those from the Phillippines). Of course the future will have less need for testing, as newborn babies get the vaccine routinely (but there will always be some mothers who wouldn't allow that).
This may be far more information than you wanted.....
It's a thin line between good employees with a low tolerance for pain or with a previous condition, or those over 50 years of age, for whom there is delayed healing (like diabetes), and malingerers. Sometimes information about a previous injury at the same body location is witheld........ So I'd recommend being open minded and give the employee the benefit of that. Ignore co-workers who say, "Oh she/he's always doing that". That can indicate an agenda that has nothing to do with the occurence.
Good luck to you if you intend to follow through with the field.
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