P-553 Periodic Consultations Performed by Occupational Health Nurses in Belgium

Introduction Belgian occupational health services (OSH), such as IDEWE, support employers to comply with the legally required medical health surveillance of their workers. During these periodic consultations, the occupational health physician (OHP) verifies that the worker is medically fit to perform his job and the occupational health nurses (OHN) assists the OHP by performing the technical examinations. Since 2014, part of the periodic consultations at IDEWE,i.e, generally one in two, are performed only by OHN according to a specific script and with the agreement of the employer. In this study we aim to evaluate the involvement of OHN in the consultations over the years. Methods Retrospective analysis of the consultations performed at IDEWE since 2014. Results and Discussion Over the years, a clear increase in the number of consultations performed by OHN was seen, ranging from 158 in 2014 to 104.308 in 2022. In the first years, an OHP’s supervision was requested by an OHN,this for 44% of these periodic consultations, but in recent years this stagnated to only 15%. The most important reasons for asking supervision were work-related health problems based on the anamnesis, the criteria for supervision included in the script, or at the request of the worker himself. Conclusion The involvement of OHN in periodic consultations increases over the years, while the support they need from OHP decreases. This highlights the evolution of the OHN’s role in mandatory periodic health surveillance into a full-fledged discipline in first-line prevention that guides workers to the appropriate expert for work-related health problems.