climate change and nursing

TriciaJ, RN · Apr 12, 2021

If you want to understand a problem better, it might not be by finding out who suffers from the problem. It might be more enlightening to find out who benefits. Follow the money.

SansNom · Apr 29, 2021

On 4/9/2021 at 3:51 PM, sabrinar said:

Hello students and nurses!

I am collaborating on a paper for publication on the role of nursing in climate change and sustainability. I am seeking the student perspective on how we think about climate change, our responsibility as nurses/future nurses, nursing curriculum related to climate change, do you think climate change is affecting our patients, and any other thoughts that you may have on the topic. This post is very informal, Let's hear your thoughts!

In general, I don't think most people think of climate change as being directly connected to the nursing job itself. Sure, individual nurses might be concerned about it, but I've never heard a question like this before, nor have I ever really thought about it.

First thought that came to mind though was the extreme amount of waste that the hospital generates. Some is out of necessity for cleanliness and sterility and what not, but a huge percentage is just mindless printouts and paperwork that could easily be done away with.

My PICC team yesterday had a meeting yesterday in which we discussed how to cut down on paperwork. This was primarily to reduce the work of keeping up with excessive paperwork, and nothing to do with environmental concerns directly, but I appreciated that it would reduce our waste production as well.

So this is a long way of saying that nurses can affect the negative environmental impact of our job (I don't like using "climate change" or "global warming" because they trigger certain people, haha) by finding ways to reduce unnecessary waste in the hospital......specifically paperwork. If your department has a task requisition printed out everytime an order is put in (that is just immediately tossed in the shredder) when you could just as easily look at the screen, then find a way to do away with the printout.