Home environmental hazard education for undergraduate and prelicensure nursing students

This paper presents a Healthy Homes education module for undergraduate and prelicensure nursing students. The education module, which is based on the National Center for Healthy Housing's framework for Healthy Homes, was developed, implemented, and evaluated in three phases. Phase 1 included nine Web-based recorded lectures on the Healthy Homes principles and on home assessment and referral. In the next phase, a Healthy Homes clinical laboratory simulation (home visit scenario and four rooms of an apartment) was created. Phase 3 involved piloting home visits by students who, under the supervision of a clinical instructor, conducted Healthy Homes assessments of clients living in two low-income subsidized housing sites. Using a pretest-posttest format, students' knowledge of Healthy Homes concepts significantly increased after completing the Phase 1 Web-based lectures. Student evaluations, which were collected after each phase, were consistently positive.