Nursing
From Florence Nightingale's Environmental Theory to Contemporary Climate Action: Nursing's Evolving Role in Planetary Health
The nursing profession, since its inception with Florence Nightingale, has fundamentally emphasized a holistic approach to patient well-being, transcending mere administration of medicine to encompass environmental factors crucial for healing and health promotion ("l. Introduction," 1975). This foundational perspective, articulated in Nightingale's Environmental Theory, posits that external environments directly influence an individual's health-disease trajectory, underscoring the critical role of surroundings in both recovery and well. being (Leão et al., 2023). This early conceptualization, though rooted in individual patient care, laid the groundwork for contemporary understandings of environmental health within nursing, extending its scope to broader cological considerations (Kalogirou et al., 2020; Peres et al., 2020). Nightingale's model specifically highlighted four key concepts: health as a restorative process, the environment's role in external conditions, the individual's interaction with their surroundings, and nursing's capacity to create health-promoting environmental impacts (Ruidiaz-Górez et al, 2023). This historical emphasis by nursing foremothers on the environment's role in health underscores a continuity with modern sustainability initiatives, recognizing that broader ecological health directly impacts human well-being (Czerwinski, 2020). Indeed, this historical context provides a robust platform for nurses to engage with contemporary environmental challenges, positioning them as essential change agents in addressing issues such as climate change within a broader planetary health framework (Shaban et al., 2024).
Recent scholarly discourse has increasingly focused on the nexus between healthcare practices, environmental sustainability, and climate change, highlighting nursing's pivotal, albeit evolving, role in this interconnected domain (Albishi et al, 2022; Shaban et al., 2024). This paradigm shift acknowledges healthcare's significant environmental footprint and the imperative for the sector, particularly nursing, to integrate eco-conscious practices into daily operations (Shaban ct al, 2024). However, the nursing discipline has historically been slow to fully incorporate broader environmental concerns like climate change into its professional mandate, partly due to the early professionalization stages that narrowed the focus of the nurse-environment interaction primarily to the immediate patient context (Albishi et al., 2022).
This narrow historical framing, however, presents a significant impediment to leveraging the full potential of nursing to address systemic environmental health challenges, demanding a re-evaluation of educational and practice paradigm’s.
In summary, the nursing profession's foundational emphasis on environmental factors in health, as exemplified by Florence Nightingale's Environmental Theory, continues to resonate pro foundly in contemporary sustainability efforts ("1. Introduction," 1975; Leão et al., 2023). This historical legacy-from Nightingale's focus on external conditions fostering recovery (Ruidiaz-Gómez et al., 2023) to broader cological perspectives (Kalogirou et al., 2020; Peres et al., 2020)equips nurses to champion planetary health amid escalating climate challenges (Czerwinski, 2020; Shaban et al., 2024). Moving forward, nurses must leverage this heritage to advocate for eco-conscious practices, ensuring that holistic care extends to both individual patients and the global environment.
References
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BMC Nursing, 2024
Volume 23, Issue 1, Pages 660-660
-A Dissertation on Sustainability Competence: Directions for Nursing
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Deep Blue (University of Michigan), 2020
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Ruidiaz-Gómez, Martínez, Laurens
Revista CUIDARTE, 2023
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Leão, Hingst-Zaher, Savieto, Patrício, Oliveira, Catissi, Lima, Borba, Bomfim, Abreu
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