Education in environmental health of health care professionals: what needs to be done?

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Health professionals are key actors in environmental health. Taking on this role requires a certain degree of competence. That is the reason why education in environmental health of health care professionals became a major concern at international level, notably at WHO level. However, in the European Union only the individual Member States are responsible for organizing education and no official body seems to have started outlining recommendations on how to set up this kind of training. OBJECTIVES: We set out to draw up some propositions for training in environmental health on the basis of the practice of educational institutions involved in training health care professionals. METHODS: A survey was conducted in 934 educational institutions involved in training health care professionals in 11 European countries and in Canada. RESULTS: Our data reveal that, whereas there are many establishments - nearly half of those that replied - engaged in educating health care professionals in environmental health, they do so in a great variety of ways, whether in terms of objectives, content, the number of teaching hours, or their target groups. Moreover, there is only limited evaluation of this training, which makes the question of recognition a very difficult one. CONCLUSIONS: Numerous difficulties have been raised in relation to education in environmental health, both by trainers and trainees. Some solutions to these difficulties are suggested but the need of official guidelines keeps going.