[Nurses in occupational health services in Poland]

Nurses belong to the largest professional group in the subsystem of health service. They take care of workers, keep contact with them on a regular basis and they are familiar with workers' health and social problems. A comprehensive preventive care of workers, not only limited to medical examinations, is the essence of occupational health nursing. The standard of occupational health nursing depends on continuous postgraduate training of nurses and on a highly qualified managerial staff. Well trained nurses can overtake the responsibility of a wide range of preventive tasks in order to aid and ease other health service workers of some of their duties.