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· Occupational health professionals are committed to continuing

competence development and to seek to achieve best recognized
standard of quality in organizing and carrying out their tasks;
· Occupational health professionals regard all information on
clients’ production, organization and documentation of working
conditions as confidential material unless being otherwise
authorized or unless material is publicly available;
· Occupational health professionals recognize the ethical
requirements of other professional groups with particular
attention to those of other health professionals;
· Occupational health professionals recognize the need to
safeguard their professional independence in relations with
customers, clients and other stakeholders and take appropriate
steps to achieve this, as need arises, for instance by inclusion of
a clause of ethics in service or employment contracts.

The quality and ethics in good practice of occupational health

professionals, acting as individual professionals, or as a professional
organization, is assessed on the basis of documentation and
implementation of the principles referred to above. OHS service
organizations may, for instance adopt nationally recognized codes or
guidance documents for one or more professional organizations in the
occupational health field. In the absence of such documents, the ICOH
International Code of Ethics may be considered or the equivalent
guidance documents of other countries.

4.3 Education and training of OHS personnel

In the daily practice of occupational health services (OHSs), different

professionals participate in the activities (collection of information,
internal processes, and output to clients and customers). To be able to
offer a comprehensive package of preventive services to their
customers, OHSs need people with a large variety of professional
skills. Nowadays there is general agreement that a fully equipped
OHS employs not only physicians and nurses, but also engineers,
hygienists, psychologists, ergonomists and personnel for
administrative and managerial support. All these professionals should
cooperate, or even – in the ideal case – constitute an occupational