Climate Change Nursing?

allnurses Guide · Oct 20, 2018

I was wondering if any nurses out there are involved in any way with climate change? I'm thinking of getting a doctorate in nursing and there's a program I'm interested in that has a concentration in public health. I know UCSF has a program in health policy but I can't attend that due to location and life circumstances. I'm restricted to online for the most part.
How does your job involve climate change? Research, advocacy, policy? Looking for ideas, thanks.

Can you clarify the connection w climate change? Are talking psych, public health which wouldn't be affected for many years to come. Just not sure how the two correlate?

allnurses Guide · Oct 20, 2018

PS I'm not trying to start a fight here. It's just the only real correlation with nursing I can think of would be Psych related and patients worried about apocalyptic scenarios. I would appreciate being enlightened.

Hppy

heron, ASN, RN · Oct 20, 2018

Actually, there's substantial reason to believe that climate change is affecting public health now: increased range and survival of various disease-carrying critters like deer ticks, the effects of more frequent and more intense natural disasters ... you get the idea.

allnurses Guide · Oct 23, 2018

Someone deleted my answer to you. I want to thank you for educating me and replying to my enquiry in a courteous way

Hppy

heron, ASN, RN · Oct 23, 2018

Someone deleted my answer to you. I want to thank you for educating me and replying to my enquiry in a courteous way
Hppy

You're very welcome. Try a DuckDuckGo search (or google, if you prefer) for "climate change health". You'll find it informative, I think.

DannyBoy8, RN · Nov 6, 2018

If you're geographically restricted to the point that you can't attend an in-person DNP/PhD (really consider the latter) program in a policy hub, you might want to closely examine how you might get value from all of that investment. You might have some luck by looking into environmental health.

SiwanRN · Nov 7, 2018

As an active member of a national public health nursing professional organization, I can tell you there is plenty being done by nurses in all areas of healthcare about climate change and healthy environments! More education in terms of a DNP/PhD is certainly something you'll have to make your own decisions on to see if it works for your life, but in the meantime, I would encourage you to think about joining the Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments! It's free to join and you get access to regular conference calls, work groups around various topics (climate change, food, safer chemicals, research, practice, policy, etc), ideas for taking actions in your own community with regards to health policy/environmental policy, and they have a free peer-reviewed textbook in electronic format on environmental health in nursing. I really can't say enough good things about ANHE. Did I mention they have free CEs too? Feel free to poke around their website here: ANHE - Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments

algorhyme · Nov 24, 2018

Thank you SiwanRN, I will definitely check out the recommendation. I'm curious to know what your nursing background/education is?

algorhyme · Nov 24, 2018

Dannyboy8 that's an excellent point! I'll have fewer restrictions in 8-10 years. I guess I'm thinking looong term. Really by posting this topic I was hoping to gain some insight into how I could apply a graduate education with this focus, has anyone walked a similar path?