FOHN accreditation to enable OH nurses to use new post-nominals

The Faculty of Occupational Health Nursing is launching a new accreditation scheme that will enable OH nurses to use a new set of post-nominals. Nic Paton looks at what it will involve and why it could be valuable.

The fact that ‘occupational health nurse’ is not a protected title has long meant that one of the challenges for OH practitioners is being able to show, and evidence, their competence, skill and expertise.

There are ways to do this. A provider, or single-handed practitioner, can become SEQOHS-accredited, which is a measure of service standards. For an individual, being able to show you are SCPHN- registered is, often, another important box that employers like to see ticked.

However, not all OH nurses are SCPHN-registered, even though they are eminently competent and experienced as a practitioner; perhaps their qualification predates SCPHN or maybe they’ve undertaken a non-SCPHN course. And, with the number of SCPHN courses diminishing in recent years and only a few now available, this may become an even bigger issue in the future.

At the same time, a nurse who is SCPHN-registered might benefit from showing progression and development in their skills and competence making them a more attractive proposition for an employer or potential client.

This is where the Faculty of Occupational Health Nursing (FOHN) is hoping to create some clarity from this spring, with the launch of a new accreditation scheme that will enable OH nurses to use a new set of post-nominals: PFOHN, SFOHN or ASFOHN.

The scheme, first revealed by OHW+ in January, is designed to complement (but very much not replace) the existing NMC register. The intention is to provide an enhanced career roadmap for OH nurses to become first a ‘Practitioner’, then ‘Specialist’ and then ‘Advanced Specialist’ of the Faculty of Occupational Health Nursing.

Professional recognition

As FOHN chair Christina Butterworth tells OHW+: “It is about recognition. It comes out of many years of people saying that employers are always asking for evidence of SCPHN when recruiting. Those who are not SCPHN (OH)-registered then have to make a really strong business case to demonstrate all the fantastic knowledge and experience they have.

“So this helping to address this misconception. But it is also about giving OH nurses another way to show and evidence their skills and expertise: to be recognised for that next level of advanced specialist.

“It will enable OH nurses to show a progression from practitioner to specialist practitioner to advanced specialist. Once a year, we will also award fellowships in recognition of those OH nurses who have gone above and beyond,” Butterworth adds.

The consultation process is being launched next month (April) and will include a series of webinars, workshops and a survey, aiming to formally launch the scheme in May. A suite of 24+ documents and processes for accreditation have been drawn up, along with a comprehensive review of the competencies needed to practice as an OH nurse now and into the future.

The principles behind the scheme are:

• Recognition of education, experience, and other attributes
• Competency linked to NMC post-registration standards
• Professional development
• Understanding and improvement of the interface between work and health

These competencies have been structured under four main groups of activities: leadership and management, health risk management, fitness for work, and wellbeing.

As Butterworth explains, in practical terms this will mean looking at areas such as clinical practice in terms of managing attendance, delivering health surveillance, or putting into place risk management or, say, quality assurance programmes. “It does get down to the nitty gritty of what we think nurses should be doing. But it is very much based on the SCPHN proficiencies for OH nurses which the NMC has developed,” she points out.

Self and external assessment

Nurses will initially work through all this via a self-assessment process. They will be expected to grade themselves against the competencies and present evidence to support that. A key part of this will be a checklist that OHNs can use to identify gaps in their knowledge, skills and experience and develop their professional practice.

This, Butterworth points out, is not a ‘one size fits all’ tool. The faculty very much recognises that the range of competencies required for each individual role will vary and depend on factors such as the sector, seniority or career stage, or size of the organisation.

The intention is that there will also be CPD and work experience requirements. Nurses should be able to use much the same sort of documentation and evidence as they already have to pull together for revalidation, meaning the process should not be too onerous.

“The other thing we are keen on is not just to be showing your knowledge, skills and experience, it is also about your other attributes,” Butterworth explains. “So how well do you engage with your colleagues, your peers, your manager, what is their experience of working with you. There is a requirement to get at least one or two referees to write a report. We want it to be an active process rather than just being a piece of paper that gets filed away.”

All the evidence will then be assessed and evaluated by an independent group of specialists on the Faculty Accreditation Board (FAB). FOHN is currently recruiting a network of volunteer assessors for this.

As to the cost of becoming FOHN-accredited, Butterworth emphasises that the faculty is keen to keep it as accessible as possible, very aware that the cost-of-living crisis is affecting OH nurses just as much as everyone else.

OHNs going through the process will need to become a FOHN member (with membership levels rising in £5 increments from a starting point of £10 to £25). On top of this, the cost of the assessment process will be £60 every three years.

Changing workforce pressures

As touched on at the beginning, Butterworth is keen to emphasise that the new accreditation scheme is not about replacing, and certainly not about undermining, the existing NMC registration structures and frameworks.

”Our competency checklist, which applicants will assess themselves against, is aligned to what the NMC is already doing in terms of proficiencies. We have mapped against the SCPHN standards.” she points out.

“We know that both the workplace and the occupational health requirements have changed a lot in recent years. Occupational health professionals need a very broad set of knowledge, skills and other attributes to manage and drive workplace health and wellbeing,” Butterworth points out.

This is, in part, being driven by the ongoing fallout from the pandemic but also tensions and pressures that predate that experience, including the rise of non-standard and precarious work, remote working, our ageing workforce, and the lack of universal access in the UK by workers to quality OH services.

“This is about that recognition of practice. Occupational health nurses, in fact nurses in general, often aren’t valued as the highly technical experts that they are. This scheme will enable us to show our value, putting us back on a level playing field with our counterparts,” Butterworth explains.

“It is also about enabling different industries to understand and recognise this. Occupational health and occupational health nursing is complex; there is no protected title, yet people, naturally, want to know they are employing quality professionals.

“Often they can’t easily access that, particularly for OH nurses who do not have an NMC-recognised specialist qualification. Our faculty accreditation scheme, will be another important way of enabling OH nurses to show subject matter expertise,” Butterworth adds.

To get involved in the consultation workshops, or to become a volunteer assessor, OH nurses should contact Christina Butterworth on [email protected]. FOHN is also running several accreditation consultation webinars.