Background

Nurses should be knowledgeable about how it affects climate change to health. To acquire this knowledge it is necessary to define competences and educational strategies that tackle environmental sustainability in nursing training. The objective of this paper is to describe the dimensions that should be included in nurse education in the field of environmental sustainability, climate change and health care and determine the most appropriate pedagogical strategies.

Methods

A narrative review of publications on environmental sustainability in relation to nursing and health care has been carried out over the last 10 years. Search strategies have been designed for fifteen databases of Nursing and Health Sciences. The results were systematized in various data arrays.

Results

Nurse training in environmental sustainability should include contents such as globalization, environmental impact, promotion of health, use of resources and proper management of waste, food and influences of production processes, the effects of smoking and environmental effects on the health of children. Educational approaches, such as the participatory action research and problem-based learning, are more appropriate to include in the nurse training while covering environmental sustainability.

Conclusions

Nurse training in environmental sustainability should include competences at different levels: individual, understanding the rationale and scope of the problem as well as acting accordingly in the professional field and with personnel. Finally, at the social level, nursing has a key role in the promotion of environmental health.

        · abstract in Spanish     · text in English | Spanish     · English ( pdf ) | Spanish ( pdf )