From Health Needs Assessment to Ergonomic Actions. How to Initiate a Participatory Change Process?

A health promotion process has been launched within a large Belgian university hospital. This presentation outlines the organisational background of the whole process and the rationale underlining the choice of the methodologies used to survey the health needs of the health care workers and to define priorities. In order to elicit effective participation from the staff members, several questions have to be addressed in the transitional phase between problem situations assessment and ergonomic intervention: which channels use to disseminate the information about the survey results, what role for the top management of the hospital and for the ergonomic experts, which support methodologies should be provided for initiating the change process?