Nursing and climate change: A multi-country survey. SIGMA Nursing Conference

Climate change is a global emergency and if not addressed, threatens the survival of life on this planet. Healthcare systems have the wellbeing of humanity at their core. However, together they account for approximately 5% of global net CO2 emissions. Analysis has shown that if the healthcare sector was a country, it would be among the first five largest emitters of greenhouse gases (Harm, 2019). Considering the significant healthcare carbon footprint, this study explored knowledge, perceptions and attitudes regarding climate change and sustainable healthcare practices amongst nurses and midwives.
A mixed-method cross-sectional 58-items online survey was conducted from June to November 2023. The survey was hosted on a range of sites such as Nursing Now Challenge website and disseminated via social media platforms including Twitter. Analysis included; descriptive and linear regression analysis for quantitative data and thematic analysis for qualitative data.
543 participants from 56 countries worldwide responded to the survey. Only 33% (n=132) of nurses were aware of the term ‘Net-zero healthcare’. Ninety percent (n=358) reported that mandatory training on climate change and nursing practice was not provided. Educational level and continent were predictors of climate change awareness, perception and attitude (p-value<0.05). Common barriers to environmentally sustainable practices were inadequate implementation of environmental policies (n=296), work overload (n=278), lack of organisational support (n=232), and less time to think about environmental impact during patient care (n=215). Four themes were identified from qualitative data; (i) sources of healthcare carbon footprint, (ii) actions toward net-zero healthcare, (iii) factors influencing nursing role and (iv) wider scalable means.
These findings report the inadequacies in climate actions and calls for organisational assessment of policies in line with nursing empowerment hence development of organisational assessment tool. It also calls for the inclusivity of sustainability in curriculum and infusion of carbon literacy project in hospital training.