Putting Prevention into Clinical Practice

Abstract

O ccupational health nurses have a long history of providing health counseling at all levels of disease prevention and health promotion. Now occupational health nurses have the opportunity to tap a valuable new resource, the "Put Prevention Into Practice" (PPIP) program developed by the U.S. Public Health Services to improve the delivery of clinical preventive services (CPS) by primary care providers. CPS include screening tests, immunizations, and disease prevention/health promotion counseling. Although all of these services are not provided at every worksite, counseling and referring workers when services are needed are realistic goals for most occupational health nurses. BACKGROUND Professional nursing organizations include in their descriptions of nursing the functions related to assisting individuals to their highest attainable level of health via health promotion and disease prevention (Kelly, 1991). The American Association of Occupational Health Nurses (AAOHN) delineates the focus of occupational health nurse activities as "promotion, protection, and restoration of workers' health..." in research based practice "with an emphasis on optimizing health, pre