Integrating sustainability education into nursing using an interdisciplinary approach

Jane Grose, Maggie Doman, Janet Kelsey, Janet Richardson and Mike Woods

Local Economy, 2015, vol. 30, issue 3, 342-351

Abstract: A major driver for interdisciplinary approaches to teaching and learning is the sustainability agenda. Our paper describes a novel interdisciplinary approach to education for sustainability in healthcare intended to raise awareness about issues and provide opportunities for nursing and design students to collectively develop solutions. A scenario was constructed based on our research on sustainable healthcare and waste management and formed one of four skills stations during a nursing clinical skills day. Learning outcomes were specified and students engaged in discussion, fact finding and practical work. Design students observed the skills stations and participated in the sustainability scenario session; they then produced a range of design solutions which were tested by the nursing students. The process was evaluated using a brief survey to determine if the session had made students more aware of sustainability issues and to gain feedback about the teaching methods. Forty one students took part and completed evaluations forms; all thought the scenarios were realistic and saw the relevance to practice. Following the scenario sessions the product design students were encouraged to respond holistically to the sustainability issues they were introduced to; they generated a range of ideas to innovate product and packaging concepts at local level and industry wide that were tested with nursing students. From our intervention, it was found that there are significant benefits in bringing together different professional groups to consider the very real challenges healthcare faces due to climate change and resource depletion. This initiative suggests a scenario-based interprofessional approach to sustainability can be effective in the undergraduate curricula.

Keywords: 3D design; healthcare; scenario-based learning; sustainability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0269094215578224 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:loceco:v:30:y:2015:i:3:p:342-351

DOI: 10.1177/0269094215578224

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Local Economy from London South Bank University
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().