Occupational Health Nursing: Competence and experience to achieve the safety, health and well-being of the working population

From 1953, with the appearance of the Company Occupational Health Technical Assistant Specialist, until 2005, with the recognition of the specialty of Occupational Health Nursing, socio-cultural and technological changes have determined the evolution of work, its processes and conditions, but have also specified the occupational risks to which workers are exposed, as well as how to organize prevention, safety and occupational health. Occupational Health Nursing is defined as a nursing specialty that addresses the health status of individuals in their relationship with the workplace, in order to achieve the highest level of physical, mental and social well-being of the working population, taking into account the individual characteristics of the worker, the job and the socio-labour environment in which they develop. Occupational Health Nursing undertakes its basic functions through the surveillance of workers' health, and constitutes, beside Occupational Medicine, the basic health unit, which in turn is part of the prevention services of both public and private companies. Today there are about 9,000 specialists in Occupational Health Nursing in Spain, an insufficient number to guarantee the prevention of accidents at work and occupational diseases, the early detection of occupational pathology, the promotion of health through modification of lifestyles and the improvement of the well-being of the Spanish working population. Occupational Health Nursing is aware of the challenges that it must face in the coming years and therefore, it relies on competences as fundamental as teaching, management and research to integrate into interdisciplinary projects in occupational health that provide solutions to increasingly complex health and safety problems at work.