[Attitudes of occupational medicine nurses towards workers' health promotion].

BACKGROUND: The paper outlines the outcomes of a survey aimed at identifying the attitudes of occupational medicine nurses towards health promotion.

MATERIAL AND METHODS: The survey was carried out on a random sample of 277 nurses.

RESULTS: Almost all respondents think that their occupational group should undertake health promotion activities. However, half of them is convinced that health promotion is only a new name for health education and medical prophylaxis. The vast majority of nurses think that under health promotion programs they should mostly deal with individual health education of patients and encourage them to adopt healthy lifestyles, and they usually undertake this kind of activities. A large number of respondents are not willing to be involved in the organization, marketing, and evaluation of health promotion projects.

CONCLUSIONS: There is a great need to intensify measures to motivate nurses to play the roles that are neglected by them, such as looking for new professional groups to undertake activities stimulating health promotion in companies, and developing new institutional and systemic support conducive to making progress in such processes.