Essentials for Healthy Homes Practitioners Course: Why should nurses attend?

12.75 Nursing Contact Hours

The Ohio Nurses Association has approved the course for 12.75 continuing education contact hours. ONA is an accredited approver by the American Nurses Credentialing Center’s Commission on Accreditation. For more information.

Note: As of February 12, 2008, the 13.5 contact hours originally approved for this course changed to 12.75. This change reflects a slight shortening of the agenda for the course.

The Essentials for Healthy Homes Practitioners course brings together a diverse mix of housing and health professionals to promote practical and cost-effective methods for making homes healthier. A major strength of the course is the peer-to-peer learning that occurs between students. Through exercises, demonstrations and discussions, students better understand the roles, perceptions and challenges that their counterparts face. And they identify ways to coordinate their work to better protect residents from environmental and safety hazards in the home.

Public health nurses and visiting nurses help their clients address specific health problems. Often these problems result from or are aggravated by environmental hazards in the home. If a nurse recognizes the connection between the environmental hazard and the health problem, the nurse is better able to assist the client. This course will help a nurse make that connection, recognize the environmental hazards that might be present, determine some potential solutions and identify resources that may be able to help the client control or eliminate the environmental hazard.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has identified seven core environmental health competencies that nurses need. As noted in the table below, the Essentials for Healthy Homes Practitioners course enables nurses to meet five of the seven core competencies.

For the two remaining competencies - #3 and #5 - NCHH has developed an on-line training course to help nurses develop a pediatric environmental health history (Competency #3) and recommend a course of preventative action or make appropriate referrals (Competency #5). NCHH is offering this class on-line, For more information, click here.

No.	Core Environmental Health Nursing Competency	How the Course Meets the Competency
1	Understand the influence of environmental agents/hazards found in the home on children's health.	Every module focuses on this issue, especially the modules that address the epidemiologic triangle and diseases caused from exposure to agents found in the home such as lead, radon, carbon monoxide (CO), environmental tobacco smoke (ETS), consumer chemicals and pesticides
2	Recognize signs, symptoms, diseases and sources of exposure relating to common environmental agents and conditions found in the home.	Modules start with the signs, symptoms of diseases caused from lead, radon, CO, ETS, consumer chemicals, and pesticides.
3	Complete a pediatric environmental health history and recognize potential environmental hazards and sentinel illnesses as part of a primary prevention approach.	Addressed through on-line training for nurses who have completed the two-day course. Students will view an actual home visit. Complete a pediatric environmental health history form and submit it to NCHH for feedback.
4	Use a standardized ‘healthy homes’ assessment tool to assess the home.	The "Making It Work" module highlights the CEHRC Visual Assessment tool developed by the Alliance for Healthy Homes. An exercises shows people a series of familiar photos and asks them to properly complete the form.
5	Recommend a course of preventative action or make appropriate referrals for conditions with probable environmental etiologies as appropriate for their discipline.	Addressed through on-line training for nurses who have completed the two-day course. Students will view take their pediatric environmental health history to complete a form that recommends a course of preventative action and make appropriate referrals.
6	Demonstrate a knowledge of risk communication in patient care and community intervention with respect to the potential adverse effects of the environment on health.	The "Start With People" module highlights the importance of effective patient communications and demonstrates two tools to help elicit important information from the client.
7	Understand resources available to support their work and reporting requirements and regulations.	The "Making It Work" module addresses confidentiality, mandating reporting, rules and regulations.