Environmental Nursing Diagnoses: A Proposal for Further Development of Taxonomy II

BACKGROUND The authors proposed a need for Taxonomy II to include more environmental nursing diagnoses at the 14th Biennial Conference on Nursing Diagnosis. Currently, Nursing Diagnoses: Definitions and Classification, 2001–2001 (NANDA, 2001) lists three diagnoses that focus on the environment: impaired environmental interpretation syndrome, risk for poisoning, and latex allergy response. As communities, nations, and geographic regions experience environmental health problems on individual, local, national, and global levels, nurses need to take an active role in assessing, diagnosing, and treating clients who experience environmental health effects of pollution, contamination, and poisoning. It is logical, therefore, to now examine the concept of environment and its linkages with health in order to provide a blueprint for further development of environmental nursing diagnoses and expansion of Taxonomy II. MAIN CONTENT POINTS Nursing theory has given formal recognition to the importance of the relationship between humans and the environment. The concept of environment has become a well‐known component of the nursing metaparadigm (Human, Health, Nursing, and Environment), and all the major theorists include an environmental component in their conceptual models. However, while nursing literature has formally acknowledged that human‐environment interaction has an effect on health, theorists have failed to delineate the human responses that derive from this interaction. Other disciplines such as biology and toxicology consider environment as a set of compartments—air, soil, water, biological systems – and examine the effects that pollutants exert on these compartments. Similarly, public health views environment as discrete compartments but, in addition, examines the effects pollutants have on individuals, groups, and society. Sociology has expanded its use of the term environment and now recognizes the complex interaction of the natural and social worlds. Anthropology also views environment as an emerging area of study that explores how human behavior changes in response to interaction within the ecosystem. The authors again propose that NANDA expand the number of environmental nursing diagnoses contained in Taxonomy II and offer the following for consideration and comment. Four major headings will help classify the nursing diagnoses: (a) Individual (specify child or adult), (b) Family, (c) Community/Groups/Aggregates, and (d) Global. Under Individual diagnose