Abstract
First-order Kerman-McManus-Thaler nuclear optical potentials for intermediate energy protons are constructed from realistic meson-exchange models of the nucleon-nucleon interaction including off-shell effects. At 200 MeV the full model developed by the Bonn group is employed, while at 500 MeV a simplified version with delta resonance inelasticity is used. The resulting off-shell effects on the nuclear scattering spin observables are found to be substantial.