OHNs see inside organization
For a handful of graduate-level and experienced occupational health nurses each year, eight weeks spent with OSHA as a nurse intern can be a life-changing experience, according to a nursing professor who went through the internship.
Judith Ostendorf, MPH, RN, COHN-S, CCM, FAAOHN, clinical instructor in the University of North Carolina master’s program in nursing and deputy director of the North Carolina Occupational Safety and Health Education and Research Center, had been a site nurse at a meat processing plant for 10 years when she was accepted into the OSHA nurse intern program in the early 1990s. “When I came into it, I was in my master’s program, and I had no idea I would ever leave the work I was currently doing,” she says. “But it was like an awakening.”
Giving nurses a look inside OSHA
The internship program, begun in 1989, creates a working relationship between OSHA and occupational health nurses, who, before they get a look inside, might view the agency as just a giant promulgator of rules on worker safety.
The internships are highly competitive — only 89 interns have gone through the eight-week program since 1989 — and open to nurses who have a solid background in occupational health and safety. Interns must be licensed RNs and either enrolled in graduate level programs in occupational health nursing or public health with a specialty in occupational health or board-certified in occupational health nursing, have at least five years of occupational health experience, and enrolled in a graduate-level nursing program.
OSHA requires advanced levels of experience in its interns, because OSHA interns go through a rigorous practicum that often yields studies, tools, or information that the agency uses for years afterward. Applicants are rated on academic status, professional presentation, qualifications and experience, and demonstrated technical writing skills.
OSHA does not directly compensate the interns for their work, but does provide the students’ college or university with a stipend for living expenses that is then paid by the institution to the student.
“The OSHA nurse intern program has brought highly qualified graduate nursing students to OSHA, and both the students and the agency have benefited as a result of the innovative products that they have produced,” says Ruth McCully, director of OSHA’s Directorate of Science, Technology, and Medicine. “Many of our previous interns have gone on to leadership positions within the occupational health and safety community and continue to advocate for OSHA and workers in those settings.”
While in the eight-week program, which is offered three times a year, interns analyze an occupational health and/or safety concern in collaboration with OSHA’s allied professionals, and construct an innovative nursing approach to that health or safety concern. During the program, interns experience the role of occupational health nurses in OSHA’s complex regulatory activities at the federal level.
Interns receive a general orientation to OSHA, including introduction to various directors and their staff; observe compliance activities through worksite visits with OSHA inspectors; participate in current regulatory process activities relating to occupational safety and health; and attend congressional and public hearings related to OSHA activities.
Occ-health nurses can achieve more
Ostendorf says her students who manage to net one of the OSHA internship slots do so after they have completed about three-quarters of their graduate coursework. “This is a major practicum, and very structured,” she says. “For the first two weeks you are being introduced to agency directors, and then you begin to focus and define what your project will be.”
The projects are chosen collaboratively with guidance from OSHA, and address a need or perceived need that OSHA has. “It’s not busy work; the projects are really work the agency needs to have completed,” Ostendorf says. “Once your project is defined, then they steer you to the people you need to work with to complete the project.”
When Ostendorf went through the internship program, she says many of her fellow interns did not have the occupational health work experience that she had, but directors of the program decided that having interns with experience worked out better for the agency and the interns. “Now, typically, they have already worked in occupational health,” says Ostendorf. By the time they enter the OSHA program, her students already have had two practicums over two semesters and worked with a nurse in industry once a week.
And while nurses usually are well entrenched in occupational medicine by the time they enter the program, when they come out two months later, they have often reconsidered their career plans. “Typically, it makes them rethink their career goals and achieve to a higher level,” explains Ostendorf. “They know they can accomplish more, and want to accomplish more.”
The same thing happened to Ostendorf, she says. “It was just a process — no one said anything to me, but I realized I had accomplished all I could where I was, and it was time to move on,” she says. When she completed the internship, she returned to her old job for just a year, waited to see if changes in the position she wanted to see would be made, and when it became apparent the job would not grow along with her, she pursued a faculty position with North Carolina.
“I may have eventually come to the same realization [had I not participated in the internship], but just not as quickly,” Ostendorf says. On the other hand, she adds, “Without that experience, I don’t know if I could have left my comfort zone. I had been with the company for 10 years; I knew them, they knew me. Sometimes it’s hard to break out of that comfort zone.”
Ostendorf says she sees the same growth in her students who go through the program. “They mature, their writing skills develop, and I see them mature professionally,” she says. “I can’t say enough about it.”
The U.S. working population served by OSHA benefits from the internship program as well, McCully states. Among the projects completed by interns are:
- A project on workplace violence resulted in the drafting of preliminary language for OSHA guidance documents on violence in the workplace.
- Interns revised the Model Exposure Control Plan for employers covered by the proposed tuberculosis standard.
- Others created a reference database to organize reference materials on adverse health effects caused by exposure to silica, and evaluated literature on silicotuberculosis.
- Interns in another group researched and analyzed information on the prevalence of silicosis by age.
- A project on tuberculosis control in homeless shelters produced recommendations about what OSHA should do to support its efforts in that area.
- Other interns developed OSHA’s “Tuberculosis Training and Resource Guide,” later presented in a poster session at an American Occupational Health national conference.
- Interns developed original curriculum for the OSHA training institute course, “OSHA Overview for OHNs”; and they researched and developed a list of hazards for inclusion in the training manual, “Framework for Comprehensive Safety and Health Programs in Nursing Homes.”
For more information, contact:
• Ruth McCully, Director, OSHA Directorate of Science, Technology, and Medicine. Contact the Office of Occupational Health Nursing, (202) 693-2120.
• Judith Ostendorf, MPH, RN, COHN-S, CCM, FAAOHN, Clinical Instructor, University of North Carolina, Masters Program in Nursing and Deputy Director of the North Carolina Occupational Safety and Health Education and Research Center, Chapel Hill. E-mail: [email protected].
For a handful of graduate-level and experienced occupational health nurses each year, eight weeks spent with OSHA as a nurse intern can be a life-changing experience, according to a nursing professor who went through the internship.
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