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Executive Summary
Pages 1-16

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From page 1...
... professionals, asked the Institute of Medicine to analyze these changes in detail, assess the supply of, demand for, and knowledge, skills, and abilities of occupational safety and health professionals, and identify personnel needs, skills, and curricula needed for the coming decades. The committee responsible for this report found that the American workforce is becoming more diverse in age, gender, race, and nationality, and that the products of work are increasingly services rather than goods.
From page 2...
... professionals, and these programs are essential tools in reducing the burden of occupational injury and illness. The work environment has changed considerably in the decades since the Occupational Safety and Health Act was passed.
From page 3...
... workforce and work environment and forecast the demand and need for, and supply of, qualified OSH professionals. The goal of the assessment was to identify gaps in OSH training programs that could be filled by either public or private programs and to identify the critical curricula and skills needed to meet these evolving occupational safety and health concerns.
From page 4...
... workforce. However, the committee was able to describe the four traditional, or core, OSH professions occupational safety, industrial hygiene, occupational medicine, and occupational health nursing as well as three other disciplines that are likely to play a substantial role in the workplace of the future: ergonomists, employee-assistance professionals, and occupational health psychologists.
From page 5...
... However, the committee notes that considerable need exists beyond the current demandfor OSH professionals by employers. Doctoral-level safety educators are needed to teach and train injury prevention and safety professionals or their number will decrease, and both occupational medicine and occupational health nursing clearly need more specialists with formal training.
From page 6...
... Further, all OSH education will need to include instruction on changes in the physical and cognitive abilities of older workers, the interaction of disabilities and chronic diseases with workplace demands, and in communication skills needed to reach minority workers, workers with low levels of literacy, and thosefor whom English is a second language. CHANGING WORKPLACE The industrial and occupational components of the U.S.
From page 7...
... CHANGING ORGANIZATION OF WORK Globalization, technology and other work design factors, and organizational design innovations also present training needs for OSH professionals. Increasing reliance on computer technology, distributed work arrangements, the increased pace of work, and the increased diversity of the workforce create several challenges for OSH personnel.
From page 8...
... schools offer such degrees in occupational safety, and they graduate about 300 students annually. This number is extremely low, given the incidence of workplace injuries, but employers' apparent willingness to hire graduates with baccalaureate degrees in occupational safety (about 600 annually)
From page 9...
... A problem in terms of responding to changes in the future workplace is a lack of research and training in a number of areas of increasing importance: behavioral health, work organization, communication, management, team learning, workforce diversity, information systems, prevention interventions, and evaluation methods, among others. Additional topics in need of attention include methods for effective training of adult workers; the physical and psychological vulnerabilities of members of the workforce stratified by age, gender, and socioeconomic, and cultural background; the resources available to help with injury prevention and analysis; business economics and values; health promotion and disease prevention; community and environmental concerns; and the ethical implications of technological advances such as the mapping of the human genome.
From page 10...
... Distance education is a planned and structured means of learning that uses electronic technology involving audio, print, video, and Internet media, alone or in combination. Limited but impressive data on the popularity and effectiveness of distance education in preparing physicians for occupational medicine board-certification examinations point to its potential as a means of facilitating education and certification of the many practicing OSH personnel without formal specialty training in the area.
From page 11...
... The committee also finds that OSH education and training should place more emphasis on injury prevention and that current OSH professionals need easier access to more comprehensive and alternative learning experiences. RECOMMENDATIONS: To address the critical need to mitigate the enormous and continuing impacts of acute and chronic injuries on worker function, health, and well-being, to develop new leaders in this neglected field, and to strengthen research and training in it at all levels: Recommendation 1: Add a new training initiative focused on prevention of occupational injuries.
From page 12...
... Specifically, it should consider · extending eligibility for its existing equivalency pathway to include physicians who graduated after 1984 and · developing a certificate of special competency in occupational medicine for physicians who are board certified in other specialties but who have completed some advanced training in occupational medicine. Future OSH Workforce and Training Expected changes in the workforce and in the nature and organization of work in the coming years will result in workplaces that will be quite different from the large fixed-site manufacturing plants in which OSH professionals have previously made their greatest contributions.
From page 13...
... Recommendation 7: Solicit demonstration projects to create model worker training programs for occupational safety and health trainers. NIOSH, in collaboration with OSHA, should fund demonstration project grants that target specific employment sectors as an incentive to develop model training programs for another category of health and safety personnel OSH trainers.
From page 14...
... , management, team learning, workforce diversity, information systems, prevention interventions, healthcare delivery, and evaluation methods. Recommendation 10: Broaden graduate training support to include behavioral health science programs.
From page 16...
... Because time, expense and contract specifications ruled out collection of original survey data on both the supply of and the demand for OSH professionals, the committee drew on membership data from the leading OSH professional societies for its analysis of the current OSH workforce. AAOHN and the American Board of Occupational Health Nursing, ACOEM, AIHA, ASSE, and the Employee Assistance Professional Association all provided copies of membership demographics and recent member surveys on relevant topics.


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