CHN

INTRODUCTION
Article 23 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights states, "Every-
one has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable
conditions of work". The government, being tasked to uphold the rights of its people,
must then gather the various expertise of its members to enable itself to promote
occupational safety and health (OSH), including that of public health nurses.

In the Philippines, the lead government agency on OSH is the Department of Labor
and Employment (DOLE). It has been given rule-making and rule-enforcement powers
to implement stipulations of the Philippine Constitution and the Philippine Labor Code.
Through its Occupational Safety and Health Center (OSHC), it produced the National
Profile on Occupational Safety and Health of the Philippines that defined OSH as a
discipline involved in, "the promotion and maintenance of the highest degree of
physical, mental and social well-being of workers in all occupations".

The union of public health nurses to the thrust of the government for OSH gave rise to
a public health nursing subspecialty called occupational health nursing. This has been
defined by the American Association of Occupational Health Nurses (AAOHN) as the
following: The specialty practice that focuses on the promotion, prevention, and
restoration of health within the context of a safe and healthy environment. It includes
the prevention of adverse health effects from occupational and environmental hazards.
It provides for and delivers occupational and environmental health and safety programs
and services to clients.

Occupational health nursing derives its theoretical, conceptual, and factual framework
from a multidisciplinary base. Elements of this multidisciplinary base include the
following (Rogers, 1998, 2003b):
 Nursing science - to provide the context for health care delivery and recognize
the needs of individuals, groups, and populations within the framework of
prevention, health promotion, and illness and injury care management, including
risk assessment, risk management, and risk communication.
 Medical science - specific to treatment and management of occupational health
illness and injury, integrated with nursing health surveillance activities.
 Occupational health sciences - including toxicology, to recognize routes of
exposure, examine relationships between chemical H exposures in the
workplace and acute and latent health effects such as burns or cancer, and
understand dose-response P relationships; industrial hygiene, V identify and
evaluate workplace hazards ( so that control mechanisms can be implemented
for exposure reduction; safety, to identify and control workplace injuries through
active safeguards and N worker training and education programs f about job
safety; and ergonomics, to match the job to the worker, emphasizing capabilities
and minimizing limitations.
 Epidemiology - to study health and illness trends and characteristics of the
worker population, investigate work-related illness and injury episodes, and apply
epidemiological methods to analyze and interpret risk data to determine causal
relationships and participate in epidemiological research.
 Business and economic theories, concepts, and principles - for strategic and
operational planning, for valuing quality and cost-effective services, and for
management of occupational health and safety programs.
 Social and behavioral sciences - to explore influences of various environments
(e.g., work and home), relationships, and lifestyle factors on worker health and
determine the interactions affecting worker health.
 Environmental health - to systematically examine interrelationships between the
worker and the extended environment as a basis for the development of
prevention and control strategies.
 Legal and ethical issues - to ensure compliance with regulatory mandates and
contend with ethical concerns that may arise in competitive environments.