Nurses' participation in community’s environmental health support and promotion strategies

Abstract

Objective: To describe strategies that nurses may use to help promote environmental and community health. Methods: This is an integrative literature review aiming to confront ideas and corroborate information regarding environmental health and the nurses’ role in supporting and promoting care for this ecosystem. Results: It was possible to perceive the value that nurses have in creating and/or using fundamental mechanisms of environmental health promotion, in order to demystify that the maintenance of the environment only serves to prevent diseases, in addition, the authors emphasize the fragility that nursing professionals and students have to learn to work with such a proposal in Primary Health Care, that is, they cannot perceive that they are important in educational and preventive actions, towards the community, with the objective of mitigating environmental risks to all local residents. Final considerations: It became evident that there is a need for a deeper addition of environmental health into the undergraduate nursing curriculum, so that nurses can leave professionally prepared to work in primary care in a more complete and functional way in the health-disease process.