A survey of occupational health professionals' preventive pulmonary practices and worksite environments: development and initial findings.

Abstract

This article describes the development of a worksite survey to evaluate a continuing medical education (CME) program to improve preventive pulmonary practices and worksite environments of occupational physicians and nurses, and baseline findings from the survey. The two-part instrument assessed individual counseling practices for preventing lung disease and worksite environments. Eighty-one occupational physicians and nurses completed the survey before the CME program. Reliability coefficients (Cronbach's alpha) were calculated for five test subsections: smoking counseling (.72), workplace hazards (.70), environmental programs (.78), workplace environment (.94), and smoking policies (.91). Baseline findings indicated that 80% of respondents reported that their employees/patients were exposed to various workplace hazards. This instrument can be used to evaluate occupational health professionals' performance and worksite environments and may be useful for evaluating change over time or following a training program for occupational health professionals.