The immediate effects of climate change such as rising global temperatures or extreme meteorological events are widely visible, but other effects, such as the impact of climate change on health, are less well known. In addition, many people are unaware that children are the most affected by the environment. Nurses can prevent and treat these effects on children’s health.
The curriculum must be adjusted to these new challenges in the nursing field. In this way, questionnaires on children’s environmental health knowledge and skills are needed to measure the ability of nursing students to cope with this emerging problem.
Some of the members of CuiDsalud, as one of the objectives of the Children’s Environmental Health project, developed and validated two questionnaires for this purpose, the Children’s Environmental Health Knowledge Questionnaire (ChEHK-Q) and the Children’s Environmental Health Skills Questionnaire (ChEHS-Q). The 26 item ChEHK-Q for measuring children’s environmental health knowledge and the 12 item ChEHS-Q for measuring children’s environmental health skills are now available for use on our website.
For more details on the validation process following the Item Response Theory, see the article: Cristina Álvarez-García, Carmen Álvarez-Nieto, Pedro Luis Pancorbo-Hidalgo, Sebastián Sanz-Martos, Isabel María López-Medina. Student nurses´ knowledge and skills of children´s environmental health: instrument development and psychometric analysis using item response theory. Nurs Educ Today. 2019;69:113-9.
