Location

Virtual

Start Date

1-3-2024 10:45 AM

End Date

1-3-2024 11:00 AM

Keywords:

washington; montana; sph; missoula

Description

Background: The World Health Organization has recently stated that climate change is the single biggest threat to the health of humanity. Climate change is largely driven by human activity generating pollutants that negatively impact the environment. The healthcare sector’s operations alone account for nearly 8.5% of annual United States (U.S.) greenhouse emissions. Nurses are well-positioned within the healthcare space to take actions to reduce healthcare emissions and promote environmental health. For instance, a nurse-authored framework helps contextualize causes of healthcare pollutants as: Waste, Energy/water, Agriculture/food, Chemicals, and Transportation (WE ACT). A large, 52-hospital health system in the United States adopted this framework in 2020 to help achieve a critical objective: to work toward becoming carbon negative by 2030. The health system is at the onset of spreading awareness and adoption of the framework to nurses, and to date, nursing awareness of the WE ACT framework across the health system had not been assessed.

Purpose: To complete a baseline assessment describing the proportion of nurses reporting awareness of the WE ACT framework and test for differences among those aware versus those unaware.

Methods: A secondary analysis was conducted of a cross-sectional, electronic survey-based study. Licensed and registered healthcare staff working across the large healthcare system were eligible to participate and were recruited via printed and electronic flyers in staff-specific physical and virtual spaces. Data considered in this secondary analysis included participants indicating work as a registered nurse, demographics (sex, years of experience, direct care versus non-direct care role) and answers to questions regarding awareness of: the WE ACT framework and the system’s initiative to be carbon negative. Data were analyzed descriptively and compared using chi-square tests for categorical variables or unpaired t-tests for continuous variables. All tests were two-tailed and a p-value of

Results:A total of 643 nurses responded, and of these, 250 (38.9%) reported an awareness of the WE ACT framework. Nurses reporting an awareness of WE ACT were significantly more likely to report an awareness of the system’s carbon negative initiative (p

Conclusions: A minority of nurses working in a large health system with an adopted framework to optimize environmental stewardship reported an awareness of the framework. Proportionally more nurses working away from the frontlines of patient care reported an awareness of WE ACT, highlighting opportunity to better socialize the framework and principles of environmental stewardship with these groups.

Implications for Practice: Nurses represent a large portion of the healthcare workforce and stand able to make significant impacts on climate and health. Nurses should be armed with the knowledge and resources to influence reduction of the healthcare sector’s footprint on climate change. Results from this study can help nursing leaders focus efforts to raise awareness and engagement with this important topic.

Comments

References:

Schenk, E. C. (2019). Environmental stewardship in nursing: Introducing the “WE ACT-PLEASE” framework. Creative nursing, 25(3), 222-231.

Eckelman, M. J., & Sherman, J. D. (2018). Estimated global disease burden from US health care sector greenhouse gas emissions. American journal of public health, 108(S2), S120-S122.

Salas, R. N., Maibach, E., Pencheon, D., Watts, N., & Frumkin, H. (2020). A pathway to net zero emissions for healthcare. Bmj, 371.

World Health Organization. (2021). COP26 special report on climate change and health: the health argument for climate action. Retrieved from https://iris.who.int/bitstream/handle/10665/346168/9789240036727-eng.pdf?sequence=1

Department

Environmental Stewardship

Department

Nursing

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Mar 1st, 10:45 AM Mar 1st, 11:00 AM

Nurse Awareness of an Environmental Stewardship Framework for Climate Health

Virtual

Background: The World Health Organization has recently stated that climate change is the single biggest threat to the health of humanity. Climate change is largely driven by human activity generating pollutants that negatively impact the environment. The healthcare sector’s operations alone account for nearly 8.5% of annual United States (U.S.) greenhouse emissions. Nurses are well-positioned within the healthcare space to take actions to reduce healthcare emissions and promote environmental health. For instance, a nurse-authored framework helps contextualize causes of healthcare pollutants as: Waste, Energy/water, Agriculture/food, Chemicals, and Transportation (WE ACT). A large, 52-hospital health system in the United States adopted this framework in 2020 to help achieve a critical objective: to work toward becoming carbon negative by 2030. The health system is at the onset of spreading awareness and adoption of the framework to nurses, and to date, nursing awareness of the WE ACT framework across the health system had not been assessed.

Purpose: To complete a baseline assessment describing the proportion of nurses reporting awareness of the WE ACT framework and test for differences among those aware versus those unaware.

Methods: A secondary analysis was conducted of a cross-sectional, electronic survey-based study. Licensed and registered healthcare staff working across the large healthcare system were eligible to participate and were recruited via printed and electronic flyers in staff-specific physical and virtual spaces. Data considered in this secondary analysis included participants indicating work as a registered nurse, demographics (sex, years of experience, direct care versus non-direct care role) and answers to questions regarding awareness of: the WE ACT framework and the system’s initiative to be carbon negative. Data were analyzed descriptively and compared using chi-square tests for categorical variables or unpaired t-tests for continuous variables. All tests were two-tailed and a p-value of

Results:A total of 643 nurses responded, and of these, 250 (38.9%) reported an awareness of the WE ACT framework. Nurses reporting an awareness of WE ACT were significantly more likely to report an awareness of the system’s carbon negative initiative (p

Conclusions: A minority of nurses working in a large health system with an adopted framework to optimize environmental stewardship reported an awareness of the framework. Proportionally more nurses working away from the frontlines of patient care reported an awareness of WE ACT, highlighting opportunity to better socialize the framework and principles of environmental stewardship with these groups.

Implications for Practice: Nurses represent a large portion of the healthcare workforce and stand able to make significant impacts on climate and health. Nurses should be armed with the knowledge and resources to influence reduction of the healthcare sector’s footprint on climate change. Results from this study can help nursing leaders focus efforts to raise awareness and engagement with this important topic.