According to the World Health Organization (WHO), climate change can cause a total of 250,000 deaths between 2030 and 2050 due to its effects on people’s health, already being the main cause of the increase in respiratory, cardiovascular and mental diseases. Faced with this future challenge, the General Nursing Council (CGE) wants to highlight the role of nurses in protecting planetary health, with a firm and proactive role in promoting sustainability and global health, as well as in pollution reduction and green initiatives.
Since “planetary health” connects directly with human well-being, nurses must become a bulwark in the promotion of sustainable lifestyles, prevention and treatments of diseases related to climate change. This is based on and strengthens the work of nursing with communities, especially with the most vulnerable and those who in the future will suffer more intensely the impact of these changes on the planet on their own health.
“Nurses must lead transformative changes that bring us closer to seeing health from a ‘One Health’ approach that links human, animal and environmental health,” said Florentino Pérez Raya, president of the General Nursing Council, who also believes that this Leadership must occur not only within the health system, but also “at the community level and in collaboration with other sectors,” added Pérez Raya.
“We nurses have a great challenge ahead of us, which is to see the planet as if it were our patient. Just like the people we care for, the planet is not healthy and we have to look after it,” explains Silvia Casellas, a nurse at the Mollet University Hospital (Barcelona), who has collaborated with the CGE in positioning the organization in a such a relevant issue that affects everyone. “We are professionals who reach the most vulnerable, the elderly, children, pregnant women or people with chronic diseases who may be the most affected by climate change,” he recalled.
Likewise, the CGE wants the review that it is carrying out of the Code of Ethics of Spanish Nursing to reflect contemporary challenges that may be related to a greater or lesser extent with planetary health, to protocolize how this should be effectively mitigated. big problem. One of these challenges is to better understand the connection that exists between planetary health and mental health. “Recent studies have shown that there are climatic factors that are related to the increase in mood disorders or schizophrenia,” Pérez Raya mentioned.
Nurses, as health professionals who are on the front line of providing care to citizens, must know how to react and promptly detect these disorders that, on many occasions, are intensified by climate stress. “We are the unifying vector that can give citizens the necessary knowledge to have a healthy life and be able to defeat diseases that are related to the environmental crisis and heat waves,” explained Casellas.
According to data from the Center for Sociological Research (CIS) from 2023, nurses are the professionals who most influence the habits and behaviors of the population. This is also reflected in its authority when it comes to recommending citizens about sustainable mobility, food and other factors that impact planetary health.
Challenges
One of the barriers that prevents nurses from achieving greater influence when formulating decisions that contribute to improving planetary health is that their presence in decisive positions is scarce (WHO, 2020), which is due, in part, to a gender limitation, since almost nine out of ten professionals are women. “Our work has always been very undervalued and on many occasions the importance of dedicating ourselves to others is not taken into account. Precisely, because we are experts in care, we have knowledge of how the planet should be cared for,” Casellas stressed.
This shows that, in order to develop the full nursing potential in the face of planetary health, the distribution of power must be modified, regulating a nursing leadership program to give more solidity and strength to the group in health policy decisions.
Likewise, the CGE considers that nursing leadership should be promoted more at the national, regional and global levels. National policy-making forums should consider the nursing perspective in decision-making related to the health system.
On the other hand, another challenge is the shortage of nurses, which is a big problem for Spain, but also for the planet. According to the WHO, 10.6 million additional nurses will be needed by 2030 to meet the demands of the healthcare system.
This shortage of professionals, which the CGE has been denouncing for so many years, puts at risk the ability of nurses to respond to environmental crises related to planetary health. This is why the organization that brings together the more than 345,000 nurses in our country asks to invest in their training in aspects related to climate change and sustainability. “We continue fighting so that nurses make informed decisions that help improve planetary health and are decisive in the ‘ecological transition’ that our descendants will face in the coming years,” concluded Pérez Raya.