Healthcare is one of the fundamental services necessary for human survival. National Academy of Science (2013) observes that healthcare is affected by external factors. These environmental factors can be classified into the physical and social. This paper will look at the concept of the environment majorly in healthcare disciplines while briefly looking at the same concept in other disciplines. While there are a lot of uses on the concept of environment, there are various definitions of environment according to the dictionaries, different professionals and theoretical perspective.
English Oxford Living Dictionaries define environment as the surrounding conditions or conditions in which a person, animal or plant lives or operates. It also defines environment as the setting or condition in which a particular activity is carried on, “a good learning environment” among other definitions.
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Business Dictionary defines environmental attributes as the characteristics of a program or project that determines the type and extent of short term and long term impacts on its environment. Environmental attributes in health care are the individual components that make up the system, in this case hospital, staff and facilities, patients and external factors affecting them. The process in which the staff carry out their functions are also attributes of the environment
Environmental factors have been noted to affect people sharing common living or working spaces. The National Academy of Science (2013) observes that the differences in environmental factors can be used to explain the health differences across the populations. These variations result into large ranges in health outcomes across the populations from small scale (neighborhoods) to large scale (countrywide). Understanding of the diverse environmental factors is critical so as to understand how they influence the physical, mental and emotional aspects of people at different levels (Zhang, Tzortzopoulos & Kagioglou, 2018). Therefore, an analysis of the patients’ and hospitals’ unique environment can assist the nurses to provide quality healthcare services for the patients.
Medeiros, Enders & Lira (2015) observe that the environment affect the life and development of an organism and can therefore suppress or contribute to disease and death. While healthcare services are supposed to prevent and cure diseases and thus prevent deaths, nurses are charged with the responsibility of balancing the environment factors so as to save the patients’ lives. They are supposed to provide a stimulating environment so as to promote the development of the patients’ health. Provision of factors that maintain a favorable environment that facilitates healing and healthy living processes such as ventilation, cleaning, lighting and feeding ensures that the recovering process takes place (Medeiros, Enders & Lira, 2015). The environmental factors in healthcare include hospital facilities, level of staff competence, population nutrition patterns, climatic conditions among others (National Academy of Science, 2013). The environment is seen to impact on the healthcare services and the final outcome.
Within the healthcare field, several theorists have come up with different theories to address the environment concept. Jean Watson developed the Theory of Human Caring which emphasizes that healing of the mind, body and soul is necessary so as to ensure that a patient is fully healed (Branch et al., 2016). Branch et al. (2016) go further to look at Florence Nightingale’s contribution on the importance of the environment in a patient’s healing process; the more conducive the environment, the higher the chances of a patient recovering from disease. Dorothea Orem on the other hand emphasized the need for the patient to take charge of their own health in order to prevent potential ailments (Branch et al., 2016). All these theories touch on the concept of the environment in relation to health care including but not limited to patient interactions, hospital surroundings and patient’s nutrition status.
Within the discipline of sociology, environmental sociologists hold the view that there is a relationship between the environment and society (Lockie, 2015). Lockie (2015) goes farther to observe that in environmental sociology social factors influence environmental resource management causing environmental issues and processes to solve the emerging issues are socially constructed and labeled social issues and social responses to the issues. Within the education sector, environment is looked at as the surroundings of a learner (UNESCO, 2017). UNESCO (2017) observes that both the physical and psychosocial learning environments of a learner determine the performance of the learner. A positive environment results to favorable academic results while a negative environment results into poor academic results. Psychology on the other hand looks at the impact of the external environment on human brains and behavior (Berman, Hayes & Krpan, 2015). Human beings have been able to manipulate the environment in their favor so as to ease daily life but the environment shapes ones brains and behaviors. Environment in this context is looked at as the climatic conditions, social relations, and nurture conditions among others. Some environmental factors are seen to influence individuals to behave in a either a positive or negative manner. Some of these factors also reinforce the behaviors that an individual has or causes the individual to cease behaving in a certain manner.
A model case would be as presented. Mary works at the public hospital in her town as a nurse in the pediatric ward. She usually leaves her house at five o’clock in the morning so that she can be able to finish making rounds in all the five wards of the pediatric department. On this particular morning, the child in the recovery ward is crying to be held by the nurse so that she can sleep. The child had slept very little during the previous night as she was having nightmares. Mary is torn between holding the child and moving on with her rounds as she has a lot of work to do before her shift ends as they are only two nurses per shift in the pediatric department.
A borderline case would be as presented. Mary works in the pediatric department in the public hospital in her town. She usually leaves her home early as she needs to make rounds in all the children wards before the doctor makes his rounds. This morning, a child in the recovery ward is crying to be held so that she can sleep as she had nightmares the previous night and therefore barely slept. Mary makes a call to the nurses’ station and requests her colleague to ask the nurse aid to come to the ward to attend to the child.
A contrary case would be as presented. Mary stood at the recovery ward door and spoke to the little child on the wheelchair before she left. The girl had broken her leg and had been operated on three weeks earlier. The leg was recovering well and so were the wounds. She says her farewell to the small girl and turns to her parents and care giver. She hands over the patients. Medicine and asks them to call the hospital in case they need anything as the girl continues with her recovery at home.
The environmental theories are quiet critical for the healthcare sector. The theories proposes that the external physical factors, healthcare workers and the patients themselves have control over the healing process and death prevention among the patients (Branch et al., 2016). The hospitals, both staff and facilities provide an enabling environment for the patients to recover. Social factors such as the people that one interacts with can also influence the healing process. Environmental theories emphasize on the need for knowledge on each of the actors. Nurses need to be aware of what they can do to enable the healing process for a patient while the patients need to know how to take care to prevent ailments and manage diseases and health conditions.
Healthcare workers are becoming interested in the environment so as to determine the health outcomes in relation to the environment (Zhang, Tzortzopoulos & Kagioglou, 2018). The environment is also of significance in healthcare as it will help to measure the relationship between health outcomes and the environment. Zhang, Tzortzopoulos & Kagioglou, (2018) affirm that there is a challenge in measuring the relationships of the many environmental factors but proposes for further research to establish this.
Beattie et al. (2014) emphasize on the need to use patients’ feedback so as to improve on the quality of services being offered in the hospitals. They propose the use of search strategy that utilizes various sources of data so as to get the level of customer satisfaction as they utilize healthcare services. An inclusion criteria scale can also be utilized to measure the environment. data will also be extracted from various sources including hospital records of patients and the nurses records. Beattie et al. then propose the application of van der Vleuten’s Utility Index matrix so as to get the final result.
In conclusion, while the concept of environment is defined in different ways in the dictionaries, theories and even disciplines, there are some common features that come out across all the disciplines. The environment is seen as the external forces that affect something and therefore impacting on the outcomes.
References
Beattie, M., Lauder, W., Atherton, I., & Murphy, D. J. (2014). Instruments to measure patient experience of health care quality in hospitals: a systematic review protocol. Systematic reviews , 3 (1), 4.
Berman, M., Hayes, D.J. & Krpan, K. (2015), Environmental neuroscience and environmental psychology, Oxford Bibliographies, retrieved on 20 th June 2018 from http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199828340/obo-9780199828340-0174.xml
Branch, C., Deak, H., Hiner, C. & Holzwart, T (2016), Four nursing metaparadigms , IU South Bend Undergraduate Research Journal, 16, 123-132
Business Dictionary retrieved from www.businessdictionary.com
Lockie, Stewart (2015), What is environment sociology, Environment Sociology, 1, 3, 139-142
Medeiros, A. B., Enders, B.C. & Lira, A. L. (2015), The Florence Nightingale’s environmental theory: A critical analysis, retrieved from www.scielo.br
National Academy of Sciences (2013), Physical and social environmental factors, National Academies Press, Washington (DC)
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (2017), Education, Learning environment, retrieved on 20 th June 2018 from http://www.unesco.org/new/en/education/themes/strengthening-education-systems/quality-framework/core-resources/learning-environment/
Zhang, Y., Tzortzopoulos, P., & Kagioglou, M. (2018). Healing built-environment effects on health outcomes: environment–occupant–health framework. Building Research & Information , 1-20.
