Since 1996, FOHNEU has worked to give occupational health nurses across Europe a shared foundation to build their practice on. What started as a first attempt to standardise occupational health nursing education — at a time when many EU countries had no formal training in the field at all — has grown, through a 2002 revision, into the document now in its third edition (2014).
The Core Curriculum sets out a five-stage framework for how an occupational health nurse's role develops: from the Basic Role, covering the history and founding principles of occupational health nursing, through the Specialist and Collaborative Roles, which build knowledge of law, ergonomics, toxicology and health surveillance, up to the Unique Role of research and evidence-based practice, and finally the Leadership Role, where the nurse operates as a strategic partner in business and organisational health. Each stage is built on the one before it, reflecting how an occupational health nurse's expertise deepens over a career — from newly qualified practitioner to independent, expert advisor within a workplace health team.
Importantly, the Curriculum is a framework, not a qualification in itself: it's designed to be adapted by individual countries and institutions — whether into a certificate, diploma, or full Master's programme — while still keeping occupational health nursing education aligned across the European Union. It draws on the WHO's Global Strategy on Occupational Health for All and on European recommendations for specialist nursing education, so that wherever a nurse trains in Europe, the foundations of the profession stay recognisably the same.
The importance of this shared curriculum was recognised early on beyond FOHNEU itself: WHO's own 2001 publication, The Role of the Occupational Health Nurse in Workplace Health Management, includes the FOHNEU Core Curriculum as one of its annexes, describing it as reflecting "a minimum standard" for specialist occupational health nursing courses across Europe. This cross-reference underlines how closely FOHNEU's educational standards and WHO's broader strategy for occupational health have developed hand in hand.
Click here to read and /or download the latest version, (2014), of the FOHNEU Core Curriculum.
