Occupational Health Nursing

[Alice Ree]

Hello,

I'm Alice Reed and I wanted to post a question about getting into occupational health nursing. I am someone who has spent the first few years of their nursing experience in school nursing. I'm looking around to other nursing specialties to find a better fit. I see a lot people who go into the occupational nursing field already have experience as a floor nurse in a hospital. Is the fact, that I haven't done that outside of my school rotations going to be a big obstacle. What would anyone here recommend doing to be better qualified for that position. 

Thanks, 

Alice

[Hollyhocks720, MSN, NP]

Depending on where you live, there are not a lot of occ health jobs.  A lot of them end up being with companies who are used to outsource that function instead of being tied to a hospital and clinic system.  if you are working on site, you will deal a lot with hearing testing and various other things like test testing for respirators as well as injuries that happened on site and possibly illnesses.  If you're working in a clinic in occupational health, that's not a specific a specific worksite, then you might see a more steady stream of injuries that occurred on the worksite and routine physicals for things like DOT drivers, etc. So MedSurg isn't really that good of a prep for it, working in a ortho clinic or a walk-in clinic or even family practice is probably closer