Eco-wellness nursing: getting serious about innovation and change

Mandate for the Nursing Profession to Address Climate Change Through Nursing Education

PURPOSE

The adverse health effects from climate change demand action from the nursing profession. This article examines the calls to action, the status of climate change in nursing education, and challenges and recommendations for nursing education related to climate change and human health.

ORGANIZING CONSTRUCT

Discussion paper.

FINDINGS

The integration of climate change into nursing education is essential so that knowledge, skills, and insights critical for clinical practice in our climate-changing world are incorporated in curricula, practice, research, and policy. Our Ecological Planetary Health Model offers a framework for nursing to integrate relevant climate change education into nursing curricula and professional nursing education. Nursing education can offer a leadership role to address the mitigation, adaptation, and resilience strategies for climate change.

CONCLUSIONS

An ecological framework is valuable for nursing education regarding climate change through its consideration of political, cultural, economic, and environmental interrelationships on human health and the health of the planet. Knowledge of climate change is important for integration into basic and advanced nursing education, as well as professional education for nurses to address adverse health impacts, climate change responses policy, and advocacy roles.

CLINICAL RELEVANCE

For current and future nurses to provide care within a climate-changing environment, nursing education has a mandate to integrate knowledge about climate change issues across all levels of nursing education. Competence in nursing practice follows from knowledge and skill acquisition gained from integration of climate change content into nursing education.

Integrating environmental health into nursing and midwifery practice

AIM

With the recognition that environmental health has relevance to all nursing and midwifery activities, the aim of this paper is to discuss nurses' and midwives' past and present involvement in environmental health in the UK, where the international situation demonstrates good practice, and the challenges and possibilities for greater and more effective UK-based activity in the future.

BACKGROUND

The association between environmental hazards and adverse health effects has received increasing attention over recent years. In the United States of America (USA), the importance of developing an environmental health role for nurses outside of the "traditional" occupational and environmental health nursing specialty has been recognized and acted upon through education, information programmes and policy developments. In the United Kingdom (UK), the same degree of interest, commitment and activity is somewhat lacking.

DISCUSSION

Little nursing and midwifery activity on environmental health issues has taken place in the UK over recent years. The lack of development in this field may relate to the problems of an already overstretched disease treatment service and the lack of an upstream approach to public health. Theoretical and philosophical influences, as well as individual and organizational obstacles or constraints, exist and may hinder nurses and midwives in their efforts to address the subject. Yet nurses and midwives are the largest group in the National Health Service workforce and this gives enormous potential for effective interventions in environmental health.

CONCLUSIONS

Whilst barriers and obstacles to nursing and midwifery involvement in environmental health in the UK exist, they are all surmountable and appropriate interventions could prove cost-effective in the middle and long-term. Additionally, they may be viewed as a necessary activity for nurses and midwives in response to real health threats and the expressed worries and concerns of patients and communities.

[Reflections on nurses participation in ecological issues]

This paper presents a synthesis of the main movements that has sustained the concept of environment, which finally has constituted the current stage of ecology that shows differentiated meaning nowadays, as it involves the sustainability of the planet. Moreover, it presents how the theme has been considered in the nursing scientific production, at international and national level, pointing out that concerns regarding environmental issues have been growing steadily within many Brazilian nursing conferences.

[Nursing and the environmental question: proposal of a theoretical model for the professional practice]

Considering the side effects of environmental changes over the population's health, a theoretical model is proposed in this study in order to incorporate ecologic matters into the nursing practices. The reference for this work is the eco-socialist-marxist theory. The model is based on the analysis of the capitalist economic process, its production technologies and consumption. It is known that this economic model generates ecoinequalities and anthropogenic impacts that rebound on the health-disease profile of the population. The nursing action, permeated by ecological awareness, can prevent and also combat ecoinequalities and destructive human actions on the environment.