Evaluation of an occupational health course. Developed for nursing education programs in Italy

1. Italian schools of nursing are now required to have a standardized curriculum. Part of the standardized curriculum is an occupational health course. The course is divided into two main units including occupational health (18 topics) and occupational health in the hospital (25 topics). 2. In an effort to identify relevant course topics from the two modules, an external evaluation using an audit approach was performed. 3. Items identified as most relevant (with a percentage of the theoretical maximum level > 78%) included both the basic concepts in occupational health and occupational health in the hospital. 4. The audit process revealed that a number of topics should be considered compulsory, whereas others could be omitted because of their lower relevance for nursing education curricula.