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The Liability of the Occupational Health Nurse

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 April 2021

Elizabeth A. Bowyer
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Extract

Occupational health nurses exercise their professional skills in positions of enormous responsibility. An occupational health nurse works in industry or business, either alone or as part of a team, to ensure workers’ health and safety. Management is ultimately responsible for providing a safe and healthful work environment, and employs nurses and other professionals to provide health services for workers and to meet the mandates of the Occupational Health and Safety Act of 1970, which has imposed many responsibilities on employers and occupational health professionals.

Highly specialized professional nurses in recent years have gained recognition of their expanded responsibility, autonomy, and accountability. At the same time, an increased number of nurses have been named individually as defendants in negligence or malpractice actions. Occupational health nurses may become particularly vulnerable to a disproportionate number of malpractice suits, as a result of factors ranging from the independent setting in which occupational nurses work to the interplay of laws affecting workers and employers.

Type
NLE Rounds
Information
Law, Medicine and Healthcare , Volume 11 , Issue 5 , October 1983 , pp. 224 - 238
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 1983

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References

Occupational Health and Safety Act of 1970, 29 U.S.C. ch. 15 §§651-677 (1976 and Supp. V 1981).Google Scholar
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See Brown, M.L., Occupational Health Nursing: Principles and Practices (Springer Publishing Co., New York) (1981) at 28-29; Babbitz, M.A., The Practice of Occupational Health Nursing in the United States, Occupational Health Nursing 31(6): 23, 24 (June 1983).Google Scholar
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