New RN in hospital occupational health clinic

Specialties Occupational

Published

I just accepted a job offer as an RN in an occupational health clinic (not employee health) - very excited to have the chance to specialize AND work during the day!  (I have worked as a hospital nurse in both med-surg and a nursery for 2.5 years). I will be starting around the first week of December.  I'm the type that likes to prepare ahead of time, if at all possible.  However, most of the information/textbooks I see about occupational health nursing pertains to nurses working at companies.  I don't think a lot of this information would apply to a hospital clinic (e.g., responding to emergencies, triage, OSHA recordkeeping, wellness programs, etc).  From my interview, it sounds like they do a lot of DOT medical exams.  The urinalysis tests are handled by technicians.  So my questions for other clinical occ. health nurses:

-What kind of procedures/tests/assessments do you do?

-Any helpful courses/articles/books to help prepare for the job?

-What skills should I brush up on/review? 

Any and all advice is appreciated!

 

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Specializes in Specializes Women and Children..

Congratulations,

OHN is so different from the hospital. Much more laid back and not much documentation. Employees are screened before coming to the facility and if they are sick or display any type of symptoms, they cannot come in. At my facility, we do preemployment physicals, EKGs, Vitals, Multistix, hearing conversations, and spirometry testing. Mixed it are few asbestos screenings. On a busy day, I see about 10 employees and on a slow day 2 employees. I work for the state government. You will love your new job. Bring a book for downtime (lots). 

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Thanks for your reply!  Been very happy with my new position!

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Specializes in Pediatric nursing: ED, forensic, neuro, triage.

Can you share or give any updates so far? I'm thinking of applying for a PRN position at a hospital occupational health clinic and would love to hear about your job! Hope it's going well 

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Specializes in Vents, Telemetry, Home Care, Home infusion.

Several threads in the Occupational Health forum offer info re hospital based occupational health clinic.

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