Target Audiences
In 1981, the Joint ILO/WHO Committee on Occupational Health identified the three levels of education required in occupational health, safety and ergonomics as (1) awareness, (2) training for specific needs and (3) specialization. These components are not separate, but rather are part of a continuum; any person may require information on all three levels. The main target groups for basic awareness are legislators, policy makers, managers and workers. Within these categories, many people require additional training in more specific tasks. For example, while all managers should have a basic understanding of the safety and health problems within their areas of responsibility and should know where to go for expert assistance, managers with specific responsibility for safety and health and compliance with regulations may need more intensive training. Similarly, workers who serve as safety delegates or members of safety and health committees need more than awareness training alone, as do government administrators involved in factory inspection and public health functions related to the workplace.
Those doctors, nurses and (especially in rural and developing areas) nonphysician primary health care workers whose primary training or practice does not include occupational medicine will need occupational health education in some depth in order to serve workers, for example by being able to recognize work-related illnesses. Finally, certain professions (for example, engineers, chemists, architects and designers) whose work has considerable impact on workers’ safety and health need much more specific education and training in these areas than they traditionally receive.
Specialists require the most intensive education and training, most often of the kind received in undergraduate and postgraduate programmes of study. Physicians, nurses, occupational hygienists, safety engineers and, more recently, ergonomists come under this category. With the rapid ongoing developments in all of these fields, continuing education and on-the-job experience are important components of the education of these professionals.
It is important to emphasize that increasing specialization in the fields of occupational hygiene and safety has taken place without a commensurate emphasis on the interdisciplinary aspects of these endeavours. A nurse or physician who suspects that a patient’s disease is work-related may well need the assistance of an occupational hygienist to identify the toxic exposure (for example) in the workplace that is causing the health problem. Given limited resources, many companies and governments often employ a safety specialist but not a hygienist, requiring that the safety specialist address health as well as safety concerns. The interdependence of safety and health issues should be addressed by offering interdisciplinary training and education to safety and health professionals.