BESERRA, E. P. Educação ambiental como espaço de atuação do enfermeiro [Environmental education as a acting space for nurses]. 102 p. Master’s Dissertation – Universidade Federal do Ceará. Faculdade de Farmácia, Odontologia e Enfermagem, Fortaleza (CE), 2009.
Available at: http://www.repositorio.ufc.br/ri/handle/riufc/1739
Abstract: Education is a key condition for environmental conscience, as it brings up in people the responsibility with nature and the concern with new relations committed to the environment. This investigation aimed to perform a research-action in which nurses interfere in schools, performing actions in environmental education in a space of debate and collective growth with adolescents. It was aimed to promote a critical-reflexive space on environmental health with the adolescents. This is a descriptive-exploratory study with qualitative approach carried out at the Elementary School Manoel Pereira de Brito, of the municipal education net, with headquarters in Bolso, in the Municipal district of São Gonçalo do Amarante – Ceará, which is located in the proximities of the construction of a mineral coal thermoelectric power plant. The study population was formed by a group of seventeen adolescents. The investigation period was from January to September 2009. The instruments and procedures used were: observation, field diary, tape recorder and group approach. In the first meeting, the Thematic-Drawing-and-Story Procedure was used, with the following guiding principle: “What do you understand for environmental health?”, then the participants presented a report of the drawing-story. In the second meeting, it was requested that the teenagers took pictures of their surrounding areas so we could lead the discussion, working as culture records. In the third meeting, lyrics, parodies or poems were created by the students, as a product of the discussions on environmental health. The fourth meeting was elaborated with the evaluation of the third, with the purpose of formulating in the fifth meeting an educational pamphlet, because the students were positively involved in the educational process. Then it was proposed a group action of reflection on important items that should be in this educational pamphlet. And finally the fifth meeting, that followed the fourth, was a final evaluation process in which the adolescents made a pamphlet about environmental health, focused on the local community. The data analysis was based on the discursive practices of the participants’ speeches. The study was submitted to the appreciation of the Research Ethics committee of the Federal University of Ceará and approved in the meeting of 19 December 2008, protocol number 252/08. In this research-action it was verified that nurses can be environmental educators, interfering in this area to provide to the groups discussions contextualized in their reality, favoring reflections on relations committed with the social-environmental. In nursing research it is necessary to explore different collection methods to explore the group technique, because it allows a mutual exchange through dialogue. Nursing care in environmental health is scarce, however this is an area that needs intervention and nurses can interfere through health promotion on behalf of ecological and consequently human well-being.