Environmental health nursing education: One school’s journey

Abstract

Nurse educators have long recognized the need for an increased focus on environmental health education in nursing. For decades, schools of nursing have answered the call to action put forth by the Institute of Medicine and the American Nurses Association to incorporate environmental health content into nursing curricula. This article details the experiences of faculty and staff at the University of Maryland School of Nursing as they launched a national environmental health nursing organization, developed individual undergraduate elective courses on environmental health and climate change, and created a post‐baccalaureate certificate program. We also report student registration and evaluation data from five environmental health courses over 10 years. Five hundred five undergraduate and 291 graduate nursing students from a variety of programs received formal environmental health education. Relevance of content was consistently highly rated, ranging from 4.17 to 4.61 out of 5, and students completed projects on a wide range of environmental health topics. Graduates of the certificate program have greatly impacted their communities in the areas of nursing practice, education, and policy.

Climate change in public health and medical curricula in Australia and New Zealand: a mixed methods study of educator perceptions of barriers and areas for further action

“…Broadly consistent with global studies, our findings indicate that climate change is not consistently integrated into health professional training (14,19,20). Our results offer a more nuanced assessment of the barriers and opportunities for making climate change more central in medical and public health curricula across tertiary institutions in Australia and New Zealand.…”

“…Thus, the future health workforce, including health care professionals and public health practitioners, need to be equipped with the knowledge, skills and motivation and agency to deliver sustainable healthcare and promote planetary health (10,11). The emergence of SARS-Cov-2 virus (COVID- 19) in 2019 is linked to the current environmental crisis and has brought further attention to the need for an emphasis on environmental change in health education (12).…”

Impact of Nursing Clinical Elective Courses on New Graduate Nurses' Clinical Practice

“…Of the 30 articles, 11 provided evaluation data on the course itself, including the quality of the course, satisfaction with the course, how well the course met the objectives, and the student's intent in going into the specialty field after graduation. [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18] Another 17 studies evaluated student-related outcomes immediately following the course, such as knowledge, confidence, attitude, and perceptions related to the content. 4,5,12,[19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32] Two other studies did not evaluate student outcomes.…”

“…Key search terms included education OR outcomes of education AND clinical elective OR elective course. Of the 30 articles, 11 provided evaluation data on the course itself, including the quality of the course, satisfaction with the course, how well the course met the objectives, and the student's intent in going into the specialty field after graduation 8-18. Another 17 studies evaluated student-related outcomes immediately following the course, such as knowledge, confidence, attitude, and perceptions related to the content 4,5,12,19-32.…”

A cross‐sectional study to assess faculty and student knowledge of climate change and health: Readiness for curricular integration

“…More commonly, pedagogical approaches are described in the literature. There are several examples in the nursing literature including an online graduate environmental health certificate, which includes content on climate change and health (McElroy et al, 2021), an elective course (Ziegler, 2020), and a classroom activity (El Ghaziri & Morse, 2020). There are also examples in the medical literature (Prasad et al, 2011; Rabin et al, 2020).…”