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► Journal BrowserSpecial Issue "Environmental Education for Nursing Students: Environmental Awareness for Sustainable Healthcare"
A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainable Education and Approaches".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 10 December 2021.
Special Issue Editors
Interests: environmental health in nursing education; evidence-based practice
Interests: environmental health in nursing education
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The university constitutes a particularly important dynamic agent of change for sustainability, as it trains future professionals who, in exercising their profession, influence their environment directly or indirectly through their knowledge, values, and attitudes. In this area arises the concept of "environmentalization, or curricular sustainability", which involves the introduction of content and environmental and sustainable criteria in the curriculum to provide students with knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values that allow them to develop professionally with respect to the environment.
Nurses are in a privileged position to lead and promote the health benefits of living more sustainably and to make the health sector more environmentally responsible. Health professionals are needed who are able to meet the mitigation and adaptation challenges posed by climate change and the potential depletion of fossil fuels and scarce materials. Environmental sustainability means more than just maintaining something or surviving; it means designing and delivering health services that use resources in ways that do not harm future health and well-being.
Moving towards the goal of sustainability requires specific changes in the skills needed to appreciate the interrelationships between environmental, social, economic, and political systems in order to understand and professionally respond to local and global sustainability challenges. Nursing curricula must include, within a broader context, the links between health and the environment. Climate change and dependence on fossil fuels pose serious threats to health care in the future. We have an obligation to prepare our students to be able to deal with health care planning and resource depletion issues. A nurse who is not able to link clinical waste management, resource efficiency, carbon footprint reduction, and health inequalities will not be able to devise solutions for future health care challenges.
In this Special Issue, we will explore and further develop these priorities through research and review articles, as well as the challenges faced by those trying to implement environmental health and sustainability content into nursing curricula and assess student acquisition of skills. Articles are particularly encouraged on experiences of including environmental health in the nursing degree curriculum; methodological and pedagogical approaches to training in environmental health competencies in nursing students; methodological designs for training in low environmental impact nursing care; validation of instruments for the assessment of environmental health competencies in nursing students; and assessment of environmental awareness of nursing students in their clinical practice training.
Dr. Isabel María López-Medina
Dr. Cristina Álvarez-García
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All papers will be peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1900 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- environmental health
- sustainability
- nursing students
- nursing curricula
- environmental awareness
Planned Papers
The below list represents only planned manuscripts. Some of these manuscripts have not been received by the Editorial Office yet. Papers submitted to MDPI journals are subject to peer-review.
Title: The Nurses Climate Challenge: Nursing faculty bring climate change to the classroom, community, and bedside
Authors: Shanda Demorest; Cara Cook; Beth Schenk; Lisa Whitfield Harris; Andrea Earley
Affiliation: 1 Health Care Without Harm; 2 University of Minnesota School of Nursing; 3 Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments; 4 Providence Health; 5 Washington State University; 6 Jefferson College of Nursing; 7 Jersey Shore University Medical Center
Abstract: This year, the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) added “the impact of climate change on environmental and population health” into The Essentials: Core Competencies for Professional Nursing Education. Presently, little guidance exists for nursing faculty new to climate education.
In 2019, the Nurses Climate Challenge (NCC) - a campaign to educate 50,000 health professionals about health impacts of climate change - developed the School of Nursing Commitment. In the Commitment, the NCC identifies partner schools as early adopters and provides a community of practice. Partner schools use NCC resources in courses and report number of students educated.
Within two years, 33 nursing schools joined the Commitment. Participants included academic health centers, research institutions, multi-state schools, and small private colleges, and programs ranged from AD to PhD. Faculty 1) integrated resources into didactic and clinical settings such as population or organ-system content, leadership, and policy and 2) used resources to support assignments. In two years, faculty reported educating over 10,000 students using NCC resources.
The Commitment may be valuable for faculty fulfilling AACN Essentials by bringing climate to the classroom, community, and bedside. Furthermore, the Commitment may be a replicable model for health professional education about climate change.