180573 Environmental health nursing assessment tools for community

Tuesday, October 28, 2008: 10:48 AM

Robyn Gilden, RN, MS , School of Nursing, University of Maryland Baltimore, Baltimore, MD
Barbara Sattler, RN, DrPH, FAAN , Environmental Health Education Center, University of Maryland School of Nursing, Baltimore, MD
Allison Del Bene Davis, PhD, RN , School of Nursing, University of Maryland, Baltimore, MD
Marjorie Buchanan, RN, MSN , Environmental Health Education Center, University of Maryland School of Nursing, Baltimore, MD
     
The Institute of Medicine recommends that environmental health be integrated into nursing practice. Community is a key environment that nurses need to consider in conducting an inclusive environmental health assessment. There are many possible sources of health risks from exposures in a community and assessing community environmental health requires knowledge of a broad range of topic areas such as air, water, land, waste management, safety, policies, and resources. The availability of information in these categories, and where the answers may be found, will vary greatly for any given community. Many tools have been developed to assess certain aspects of the community environment (ex. Physical environment/safety, transportation, water), but the nurse is left to find and compile those pieces to provide a complete assessment tool that is often lengthy and cumbersome to employ and that lacks uniformity and comparability across communities. Thus, there is a need for a comprehensive, yet not burdensome, assessment tool that can guide any community health nurse in gathering the necessary data. This session will describe development of such an assessment tool by nurses from the Environmental Health Education Center at University of Maryland School of Nursing and the piloting of its use by undergraduate and graduate community health nursing students.

Learning Objectives:
1)List the key component areas in a community environmental health assessment 2)Describe the steps in compiling and piloting a community environmental health assessment tool 3)Identify additional sources of information and technical assistance available to nurses based on findings from a community environmental health assessment

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: Dr. Sattler is a world-recongized expert in Environmental Health Nursing. She teaches, conducts participatory research, and helps advocate for changes in practice that improve and protect the environmental health of all. She is also extensively published and co-edited/authored the only text book of Environmental Health Nursing.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.

See more of: Educational Tools for Teaching Community Environmental Health
See more of: Public Health Nursing