vi Preface between occupational health nurses, physicians, and other health care providers with re- spect to appropriate and consistent procedures and parameters for clinical management and referral. In addition, the use of standardized clinical guidelines for nursing practice can help in the following ways: ● To provide for goal-directed outcomes ● To guide the systematic collection of data ● To enhance critical thinking and clinical management skills ● To maximize clinical decision-making ● To improve the quality and consistency of nursing care ● To guide the development of evaluative criteria ● To foster professional accountability It is of paramount importance that the health care provider appropriately maintain confi- dentiality of employee health information. Information required by law and relevant to work-related illness and injury should be disclosed only within the parameters of ethical codes, maintaining employee autonomy, and informed consent. We hope that these guidelines will become a valuable resource for the professional regis- tered nurse practicing in an occupational health setting. We encourage our readers, how- ever, to make use of the many resources available to the occupational health nurse from both public and private sources. To that end, we have included appendices consisting of a variety of sources of information on the practice of occupational health nursing and on specific clinical conditions. Appendix A offers a categorical list of books and journals in the Occupational Health Nursing Reference Library. In Appendix B are Community Re- sources, including a list of training videos, catalogs, agencies, and organizations con- cerned with the advancement of health in the work setting. A directory of the State Boards of Nursing as well as states that have enacted the Nurse Licensure Compact can be found in Appendix C, and in Appendix D are listed the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health Education and Research Centers. Appendix E presents commonly used acronyms and Appendix F is a glossary of commonly used terms. We encourage our read- ers to make use of these and other valuable resources in their daily practice and to con- tinually search for new scientifically-based information that will support and improve occupational health nursing practice. Bonnie Rogers
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