• Energy Research
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AbstractAimTo explore the concept of sustainability in nursing using social media as a vehicle for discussion on the topic.BackgroundThere is a need for an increased awareness among nurses of the issues that are crucial for the healthcare sector to prepare for climate change and contribute to sustainable development. However, topics about sustainability and climate change are not a requirement of nursing curricula in Europe; social media provides an opportunity to raise issues and promote discussion.DesignA thematic analysis of a Twitter discussion.MethodsA Twitter discussion session hosted by @WeNurses took place on 24 March 2015 over 1 hour. Data were gathered via this online discussion hosted on Twitter, a social media platform. Following the discussion a thematic analysis of the posted Tweets was conducted.FindingsOne hundred and nineteen people posted nine hundred and ninety six Tweets, a reach of 3,306,368. Tweets broadly followed the questions posted by the team. Several threads related to the sustainable use of healthcare resources and the need to reduce waste was evident. A Word Cloud of the Tweets highlighted prominent words in the discussion: sustainability, nursing/nurses, curriculum, important, waste, practice, resources, student, plastic, health, gloves.ConclusionSocial media is an effective way of engaging nurses and students in a discussion on challenging issues. Sustainability appears to be important for nurses, with a particular emphasis on resource use and the importance of sustainability topics in nurse education.

Current European agriculture policies and strategies are aimed to boost the transition from the predominant conventional to a more environmentally friendly agriculture model. As part of this, it is crucial to identify the barriers that exist to implementing crop-specific management practices so that appropriate mitigating steps to overcome these can be executed. Participatory action research, where farmers are research actors rather than objects, is essential to identify the main barriers farmers have to face. The objective of this study was to identify the main barriers to the adoption of a combination of sustainable management practices in olive cropping in Southern Spain. A 20-item questionnaire was designed and responded to by 200 Spanish olive farmers. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were used to assess the factor structure. The final best fit model included 14 items that were grouped in the following four barriers or facilitators: “lack of training/formation”, and “lack of economic/policy support” as barriers; “wellbeing–nature connection” and “environmental impact awareness” as facilitators. The mean scores on the different factors were higher than the theoretical mean, so the identification of the two barriers and the two facilitators for implementing sustainable practices was robust. Farmers, especially women, are concerned about their knowledge limitation in implementing sustainable management practices, which opens a window of opportunity for specific actions (i.e., training and demonstrative events) to be taken for accomplishing the agriculture sector transformation.

Policy documents across the globe call for citizen engagement to fight climate change emergencies and build more sustainable societies. They also recognize the key role of formal and non-formal education in preparing citizens to address those challenges. However, there is a need to identify appropriate instruments to evaluate the impact of educational interventions on people’s knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors, which are essential components of the action competence required to become environmental citizens and agents of change. The aim of this paper is to investigate the potential of the Sustainability Consciousness Questionnaire (SCQ) to evaluate different educational interventions aimed at increasing environmental citizenship. It presents three sub-studies from Spain, Belgium, and Sweden using the SCQ with varying contexts, duration, and target groups yet sharing common pedagogical features in the interventions. Pre-intervention scores indicate a common pattern of high sustainability knowingness, moderate sustainability attitudes, and lower sustainability behaviors in the three dimensions (environmental, social and economic) of sustainability consciousness, and a positive impact on sustainability behavior after the intervention. These findings are especially significant when compared to previous studies. We therefore conclude that the SCQ is useful for detecting the effects of learning interventions of varying designs and contexts that address environmental citizenship. The results are discussed in terms of key pedagogical features of the educational interventions, and the appropriateness and sensitivity of the instrument in detecting changes in the intended direction. It concludes with implications for research and practice and suggestions for future lines of work.

There is limited European literature on nursing and sustainability; nursing students are poorly prepared on the connections between resources, climate change, sustainability, and health, so they must acquire knowledge and develop skills and competencies in this field. The use of digital technologies and teaching via E-learning has grown, and has been widely adopted as a learning method for nursing.The aim of the current study was to test and evaluate digital educational materials on environmental sustainability and health, in the context of university nursing education in different European countries.An observational cross-sectional design.University of Plymouth, University of Jaén, and University of Esslingen for Nursing Degree Studies.299 nursing students: 161 students from University of Jaén; 106 from Plymouth; and 32 from Esslingen. 22 professional evaluators with different profiles were recruited: Teachers, Clinical professionals, Delphi Experts, and Technical Experts.We conducted a piloting and validation process. The materials were designed and adapted to the NurSusTOOLKIT Sustainability Literacy and Competency framework. Evaluation was developed by professionals and students. We used the Spanish Standard for the assessment of Digital Educational Material Quality at University level questionnaire. All students provided informed consent prior to taking part in the learning and evaluation.The overall evaluations of materials by students and professionals were 7.98±1.28 and 8.50±1.17, respectively. The Ability to generate learning was scored higher among students (mean difference: 0.84; 0.22-1.47; p=0.008). In the overall assessment by students, statistically significant differences were found between the three universities (Welch: 11.69, p<0.001).Students, professionals, and technical experts considered the materials to be very good quality, especially regarding the quality of contents, format, and design. For students, these materials can generate reflection and learning regarding environmental and health issues during nursing training.