Critical care nurses' experiences on environmental sustainability: A qualitative content analysis

Intensive care units (ICUs) are the primary producers of greenhouse gas emissions within hospitals, due to the use of several invasive materials. Nurses represent a large portion of the healthcare workforce and can be pivotal in promoting sustainability practices. Several international reports have suggested that nursing can help achieve the sustainable development objectives set by the United Nations.

The purpose is to explore behaviour related to environmental sustainability in intensive care nurses.

A qualitative content analysis comprised of in-depth interviews involving 27 ICU nurses, who were each asked the same open-ended question. The transcripts collected were then analyzed and organized by a team of independently-working researchers. The analysis of the extrapolated concepts was carried out following the Neem M. (2022) method. The study is supported by a grant from the Centre of Excellence for Nursing Scholarship, Rome, July 2024.

The main recurring themes are as follows: (1) concepts of environmental sustainability in ICUs, (2) critical issues related to sustainable intervention in the ICUs (3) proactive environmental sustainability attitudes in ICUs. Time to know, define criticality, and improve is the conceptualization of sustainable behaviors experienced by ICU nurses.

Taking the time to know and define the critical issues for implementing sustainable behaviours in the ICU, turned out to be the key to enforce the mindset of green nursing thinking.

Sustainability behaviours need to be proposed and verified by ICU managers by creating sustainability teams and promoting a good working environment, founding the progression to green ICUs by focusing on health impact education and mindfulness.