The purpose of this article is to assist OH nurses to use the Faculty of Occupational Health Nursing (FOHN) documentation developed for accreditation, to enable reflective practice and NMC Revalidation. This can be used at any time within an OH career journey.

 Although, a brief introduction to the accreditation scheme is provided, there is a comprehensive information in the accreditation section of the website. Time spent exploring the FOHN site and accreditation can be logged as individual continuing  professional development within the NMC log.

In October 2024 FOHN launched the accreditation scheme. A voluntary scheme which enables successful applicants to join the Directory of FOHN Accredited Specialists and use specific postnominals. The aim is to assess good practice, endorse exceptional practice, and create a development route for those nurses aspiring to work at an advanced level .

There are four Levels

• Practitioner (PFOHN) for those without OH qualifications but with two years’ experience
• Specialist Practitioners  (SFOHN) have two  years post-qualification experience.  The accepted qualifications are an ENB Specialist Practice Qualification recorded by the UKCC, an NMC approved Specialist Community Public Health Nurse (Occupational Health) qualification, or a post graduate qualification. The qualifications are approved by the National School of Occupational Health (NSOH) alongside FOHN.
• Advanced Specialist.(ASFOHN) Normally a Specialist Practitioner with enhanced competency and commitment. Four years’ post qualification experience are required.
• Fellow- (FFOHN) Advanced Specialists who have made an exceptional contribution to OH and are nominated by a Board member

Fo a quick idea of which level may be applicable, see the Decision Tree.

Two documents from the website are particularly useful:

• The Professional Competency Checklist (PCC) which is a self-assessment tool. This guidance version has suggestions for evidence for FOHN  accreditation in the right-hand column.
• The Logbook Template is a two-page document used to record an activity or project.

Professional Competency Checklist (PCC)

This is a nine-page document includes seven pages of self-assessment which can be logged as individual CPD.

This divides competencies into four areas:

1. Strategic Occupational Health leadership and management
2. Health Risk Management
3. Assessing and Enhancing Fitness for work/task
4. Promoting Good health and Wellbeing

A self-assessment score is between 0-5, explained on Table 1 on pages 8-9. This includes knowledge or understanding both generally and in a particular situation. It is also an indication of professional development.

As a  rough  guide:

0 = Unaware “You have no knowledge or understanding of this competency”

3 = Intermediate “clinicians can successfully complete tasks in this competency independently, though you may need help from an expert”; “Your CPD demonstrates learning outside of your immediate job requirements. Your forward plan shows how you will learn new skills to complement your career plan such as management, supervision, programme development research.”

5 = Expert “You are known as a subject matter  expert”…”Your CPD demonstrates communication learning, teaching or mentoring of others”

Initially, a number can simply be allocated with the evidence added latter to demonstrate achievement. The initial assessment can be used to identify areas which need to be improved, or which a clinician may be interested in and would like to develop. The next step would be to identify appropriate study days, webinars, courses or  in house training to meet these needs. At an early career stage, this may centre around clinical information and basic OH processes, with 0 and 1 evaluations, which is expected. More theoretical learning, such as audit and root cause analysis, is likely to be part of career progression. From this a Three-year Plan for personal CPD can be devised. Both documents might form the basis of an NMC Written Reflective Account. Discussion with line management to see what support is available financially and/or time to attend is advised. From a FOHN accreditation point of view this is the first document completed and will act as a guide as to what level of practitioner may be applied for. It can also identify actions and learning which might enhance the next level application. Guidance on creating a business case for support with accreditation or other activities can be found here Persuading employer to support your application-business case.

Logbook

The Logbook contains the following sections:

• Areas of Professional Competence covered (refers to numbers in PCC)
• Summary of Activity
• Details of personal involvement
• Details of Occupational health and wellbeing work
• Discussion of the personal and professional/technical skills l skills involved
• Outputs of activity
• An indication of your degree of responsibility, level of authority
• Reflection on the successful and less successful feature of each project or responsibility
• Comment on how this has benefited your professional development
• How is this relevant to the NMC Code?

This can be useful to record any  project undertaken, from which information can be  transcribed into the five NMC Written Reflective Accounts. The suggestion is to complete the Logbook for any significant piece of work, and when revalidation comes around there will be several to choose from. The relevant Logbook pages  can be attached as evidence for your reflective discussion and confirmer. You may choose to attach documents or outputs  e.g. policies, information leaflets and new forms.

These completed Logbooks may also be useful for annual appraisal and as a reminder of accomplishments for job applications and salary negotiations.

The NMC requirements are:

Each reflective account must be recorded on the approved form and must refer to:

• an instance of CPD, and/or
• a piece of practice-related feedback received, and/or
• an event or experience in professional practice

plus how they relate to the Code.

The specific template and NMC requirements can be found on the NMC website.

The UK Occupational Health Practitioners Facebook consensus seems to be that keeping NMC documentation up to date by spending a modest amount of time on a regular monthly basis, works well. It may be less stressful  than a scramble to remember activity and create documents in the 60 days preceding Revalidation after receiving  the notification.

In terms of FOHN Accreditation,  if you have an up-to-date PCC and several Logbooks completed, a substantial part of the work required for accreditation is done. Add an up-to-date CV, NMC CPD log, NMC Practice Hours log and you are nearly there.

Once you have explored the FOHN Accreditation website, should you have any personal queries please email nurseaccreditation@som.org.uk .