Megan Czerwinski, a doctoral student in nursing, is using data from the U-M Sustainability Cultural Indicators Program (SCIP) survey as part of her dissertation. Her research focuses on sustainability education in the nursing profession, and she wants to understand “what nurses know or feel” in regards to sustainability.
“The foundation is there” for nurses to be engaged with sustainability, she says. “Florence Nightingale talked about the environment patients are in and how we need to pay attention to that.” What’s more, nurses are the largest component of the US healthcare workforce, and have been consistently rated as the most trusted profession by Gallup Polls. “Nurses can play a role as trusted, nonpartisan voices in starting sustainability discussions and pointing out the immediate impacts and health impacts of [sustainability issues],” she says. For instance, talking about reducing medical waste, or location-specific contamination like the current dioxin pollution impacting Ann Arbor groundwater.
Keywords: Case Study, Nursing, SCIP