Career Design for Occupational Health Nurses：Focus on Formation of Specialist Management Capability

Abstract

Occupational health nurses are specialist personnel responsible for medical care in companies and serve a company as well as individual employees in the workplace. The responsibility of an occupational health nurse is to work with and coordinate among various people working with employees regardless of the kind of work done. However, more than half of the 242 occupational health nurses surveyed in the 2001 investigation by the Japanese Nursing Association actually felt gaps in their needs, expected roles and evaluations when compared to people in other related kinds of work. Compared to general workers, occupational health nurses have narrower career experiences because of their specialty – that is to say, they have fewer opportunities to receive on the job training (O.J.T.) outside of medical techniques. Alternatively, some occupational health nurses are in company management positions. We examined the occupational health nurses in management positions and analyzed their job experiences and skill formation process they used to acquire the management capability that fits each organization.

Using secondary analysis of career research of forty occupational health nurses we found two distinct career patterns for occupational health nurses: the single-company pattern and the transitory worker pattern. We comparatively analyzed the similarities and differences in the two patterns based on spoken interviews with ten occupational health nurses serving as managers. As a result, we were able to clarify the career path of specialists within the internal labor market and specialists within the external labor market. We found that occupational health nurses with the capacity to serve as managers developed capabilities other than their specialty through O.J.T. experience. They were able to do this because they had relationships with various people in other kinds of work or related positions. We also found that such personnel were able to acquire the same successful career even the external labor market.