1. 'Occupational health' is not a legally protected title and anyone can call themselves an 'OH specialist' or 'OH practitioner' irrespective of qualifications and experience 2. The GMC register has a specialist registration category for occupational physicians. Similarly, OH nurses who have completed an NMC-approved SCPHN course are registered as specialists on the NMC register. Both registers are searchable by the general public 3. Many OH-qualified and experienced practitioners are ineligible for specialist registration and cannot readily be identified as 'OH professionals' from the medical and nursing registers 4. Our online survey of OH professionals found overwhelming support for making 'occupational health' a legally protected title 5. The vast majority of respondents agreed that any nurse, doctor, physiotherapist, psychologist, occupational therapist or other allied health professional offering advice to employers on fitness for work must have current competence in OH, based on training, qualification and revalidation 6. Nine in 10 respondents agreed that an organisation should only be permitted to use the term 'OH service' when their clinical services were delivered by practitioners with current competence in OH, though some respondents felt that various OH tasks could be carried out by non-specialists provided they were supervised by a qualified OH professional 7. Professional titles such as 'physician', 'registered nurse' and 'physiotherapist' are legally protected, but new legislation would be required to extend protection to 'occupational health' - and this is highly unlikely 8. A major overhaul of the NMC register to better recognise OH nursing looks unlikely in the short term, though changes to the register, including OH 'annotations'and even a replacement of SCPHN with an OH-specific specialist register could be longer-term solutions to issues raised in the survey 9. How protection of the OH title could be achieved in practice is far from straightforward 10. The UK government wants to make it easier for employers and self-employed people to obtain OH support; however, more needs to be done to ensure that such access is to competent OH professionals and services.
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