Occupational Health Nurses' Role Experiences

June, Kyung Ja; Joo, Hea Ju; Kim, Young Mi

Abstract

PURPOSE
The purpose of this study was to describe the role experiences of occupational health nurse. The research question was "what are daily experiences in practice?"
METHODS
The data were collected through the focus-group interviews with nine occupational health nurses and analyzed by the grounded theory of Strauss and Corbin (1998).
RESULTS
The core category on occupational health nurse role experience was named as "struggling alone with the dual role". The causal conditions included 'unfamiliar area' and 'new work'. The contextual conditions included 'overload of work', 'tasks beyond OHN job' and 'disharmony with colleagues'. The intervening conditions were analyzed as supportive factors and discouraging factors. There were action/interaction strategies 'getting information about tasks', 'working as a professional', 'establishing a cooperative relationship', 'seeking help' by trying to regulate the phenomenon. Finally they succeed in 'establishing the identity' and 'feeling proud', but sometimes they could be 'suffering from low morale', or 'considering turnover'.
CONCLUSION
Through these results, it can be explained that occupational health nurses have been exerting themselves to establish their role with various situation through the conflicted context. Based on the findings, we suggest developing the diverse continuing education programs to be tailored for OHN's needs and reinforcing the occupational health services under the legal and political support.