Turkey
Occupational Health Services in Turkey
Turkey is a transcontinental Eurasian country. According to the 2009 census, more than 77 million people live in Turkey, three quarters of them in towns and cities. People within the 15–64 age groups constitute 67% of the total population, the 0–14 age group is 26% of the population, and people 65 years old and above make up 7%. On the other hand, 40% of the population works.
The ministry of Social Welfare in Turkey administers occupational health services.
The first labour law was passed in 1936 and a new labour law was enacted in
1971. In 2003, the law was updated again and it includes important articles for the improvement of OH services. However, there were no articles in this law specifying the job duties and responsibilities of OHNs. In addition, the independent roles of OHNs were not defined but instead they were included as personnel who assist a physician. Because of this, the Turkish Occupational Health Nursing Association (TOHNA) opened a lawsuit against the Ministry and then the Supreme court stoped the implementation of this law.
Untill now, many regulations have been passed and later on were changed. According to the latest regulation; OHN is defined as an assistant of physician under the group of others, OHN proffesionals believe that it would have been better if OHN was defined as a seperate entity and its job duties and responsibilities were stated clearly. The latest regulation is no better than the one in 2003 and we have a long way to go to have a regulation which could be considered as adequate by OHN proffesionals.
However, an OH service team comprises a nurse, a physician and occupational safety experts. There are approximately 3,300 OH physicians in Turkey. Although the number of occupational safety experts is not known, it is supposedly higher than the number of OHNs and physicians.
Occupational Health Nurse Education
In Turkey, nursing education was based in elementary schools until 1959. İt lasted 4 years following 8 years of basic education. Students took nursing courses in addition to general high school courses. At the end of this programme, students were given a diploma and the title of nurse. Four-year undergraduate nursing education offering a Bachelor’s degree first started at Ege University in 1955. There were various other programmes of nursing education until 1977 including: a high school diploma programme, an associate degree programme and a baccalaureate programme. Eventually in 1997, all nursing education was undertaken at universities where the nursing schools commenced offering a 4-year university education. Today there are more than 80 nursing schools affiliated with Universities.
Postgraduate nursing education began in 1970 and since then MSN and PhD degrees in public health nursing have been offered. OH nursing classes are given within these programmes; however, there have not been any specific MSN or PhD programmes in OH nursing.
In Turkey, any graduate nurse is entitled to work as an Occupational health nurse, but they are mainly chosen from among those nurses who completed high school diploma programmes or who got MSN in Public Health Nursing.
Turkish Occupational Health Nursing Association (TOHNA)
Turkish Occupational Health Nursing Association (TOHNA) was founded and prepared a draft law on OHNs’ roles, functions, authority and qualifications, which was presented to the Ministry of Social Welfare. It has almost 200 members.
Aims To ensure:
- the health , safety, optimum working capacity
- the well-being of working population
Objectives
- To promote the role and missions of the profession
- To develop reflection and research in the fields of competence of the OHN
- To encourage continuing education in the speciality.
- To value the expertise of the OHN
For further information contact:
Melek Nihal Esin mnesin@istanbul.edu.tr
Ayşe Beşer ayse.beser@deu.edu.tr
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