New techniques for educating nurses about environmental health

With the development of an Environmental Health Standard as a requisite element of the American Nurses Association's Scope and Standards of Professional Practice, environmental health is now a part of all nurses' responsibility. In order to prepare nurses in this new content area a number of educational initiatives have been created. The Educational Committee of the Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments has created a set of core curriculum materials with a range of web-based resources for use by nurses. Environmental health assessment questions have been integrated into simulated Electronic Health Records for use by nursing faculty/students in order to learn about and apply environmental health into nursing assessments. To address the learning needs of nurses in practice, several programs exist. A new iPhone application, GreenRN, provides daily reminders on how practicing nurses can integrate environmental health into their personal and professional activities. A range of topic-specific, nursing conferences have been convened to help nurses learn about regionally-specific environmental health concerns, including a conference on the potential health sequelae of the Gulf Oil spill and the health risks associated with natural gas extraction (fracking). This presentation will describe these and other current educational initiatives that are helping to educate nurses about environmental health.