Understanding the Nurses Perspective of Citizen Science and Climate Action

Abstract

The issue of climate change is one that threatens the foundation of human health and existence. As health professionals and leaders, nurses have been trained to advocate for health, communicate risks, and manage complex systems. This makes nurses ideal candidates to raise awareness, educate and carry it out for climate change and climate action. Citizen science might be a way that fits for nurses to engage in climate action personally and/or within their communities. This qualitative descriptive study used semi-structured interviews to understand nurse’s perspective on climate change, citizen science and climate action. Twelve nurses from the interior of British Columbia (BC) were interviewed using a semi structured interview guide. Thematic analysis was employed. Data analysis yielded four themes to describe nurses’ perspective on citizen science and climate action: health impacts; climate knowledge, beliefs, and language; climate action; and system influences. Nurses explained their personal and professional experiences living through forest fires where the threat of evacuation was ever present. These experiences contributed to their beliefs about climate change and how to contribute both personally and in their workplace to be part of climate action. These findings provide an initial understanding about how nurses think about citizen science and how they might engage in climate action to support our first health system, our ecological system.