Occupational Health Nurses in European Nuclear Power Plants: Safety, Readiness, and Well-Being Require a Heuristic...

Across Europe, nuclear power plants operate within sophisticated regulatory systems that tightly govern occupational radiation exposure. International and European frameworks, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Safety Standards and the Basic Safety Standards Directive 2013/59/Euratom, define robust requirements for monitoring, dose optimization, and worker protection, yet translate only weakly into nursing-specific competencies and educational pathways. Available evidence suggests that, where it has been assessed, emergency nurses' knowledge of radiation protection and response is poor; that willingness to respond is shaped more by psychological and occupational factors than by technical knowledge alone; and that long-term, low-dose occupational radiation exposure is associated with measurable job stress and burnout among medical staff. Yet radiation-specific competencies remain underdeveloped in nursing education. This editorial argues that European specialist nursing education and continuing professional development should incorporate a structured, radiation-focused training framework for occupational health nurses working in or with nuclear power plants. We propose a heuristic model, presented as a practice-oriented table rather than a validated curriculum, integrating four domains: radiation protection competence, emergency response readiness, psychological resilience and willingness to respond, and organizational well-being. It is advanced as a normative, testable proposition to guide educational reform, local protocol development, and future empirical evaluation.