Posted On 17 Apr 2024
Indulge me for a minute – Take a leap forward 20 years and how will Occupational Health in the UK look in 2036.
I have no doubt that it will be more accessible, wide ranging and more recognised than it is today but also streamlined – meaning almost entirely remote (phone based) – even online… type in your symptoms and let the computer give you the answer and advice.
I hope I am wrong and as a recruiter it’s what I worry about most.
I fear this as breaking into the occupational health industry for a Nurse or Physio or Therapist is very difficult.
I speak with many of these candidates every year who have good skills, some transferable, that want to get into Occupational Health but cant.
The reason is that there are very few trainee opportunities as the large employers do not have the time to do this. It would be great if the biggest employers could set up trainee integration programmes for students and to be fair some have but on a small scale.
The recruitment industry has the same problems now that we have had for the past 20 years – lots of occupational health vacancies – not enough candidates and unfortunately this issue has not been addresses in that time – without relevant training by employers for new recruits who do not have OH experience the job roles will become harder to recruit for.
There has been a recent paper published by Public Health England called “Educating Occupational Health Nurses” see here – Educating OHNs final Oct 2016.
Which for an OH professional is worth reading and hopefully will impact onto employers and the way they look at OH over the next 20 years.
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