Developing global occupational health services based on nursing and WHO principles

Despite a pervasive trend to minimize worker health and safety standards in developing countries, the ethical and moral principles of nursing and the WHO's Principles of Occupational Health provide the necessary philosophy foundation to develop a global occupational health service. The session will discuss the process used to develop and operationalize a global company's mission to provide the same standard of care and access to occupational health programs and services regardless of an employee's position, responsibility, or geographic location, whether in developing or developed countries. With production across four continents, the architecture of the global occupational health services consists of a foundation of 14 occupational health standards, based on occupational health nursing and WHO guidelines. Building upon this foundation are policies, guidelines, occupational health nursing protocols (nurses are at all sites), and strategies for clinical and program outcome measurement. Creating and refining the global occupational health services is a continuing process with continual collaboration with other company functions, departments, and disciplines. The collaborative focus is in providing holistic occupational health nursing practice— caring for the whole person, positively affecting the health, safety, and wellness of all employees no matter where they work in the world. Included will be a discussion of the approaches to overcome implementation barriers in delivering global occupational health services, as well as suggestions for programming changes based on outcome data.