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Hospitals should make nurse staffing and supportive nurse work environments a core part of extreme heat emergency preparedness, according to a new editorial from Penn Nursing's Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research (CHOPR), as record-breaking temperatures and heat-related emergency department visits continue to rise across the United States. The editorial appears in Public Health Nursing.

Senior author Eileen T. Lake, Ph.D., RN, FAAN, the Edith Clemmer Steinbright professor in gerontology, professor of nursing and sociology, and CHOPR associate director, and co-authors Domenique Villani, MPH, RN, a CHOPR T32 predoctoral fellow, and Ysabella Perez, B.A., a recent Penn graduate and CHOPR research assistant, argue that building health system climate resilience requires ensuring bedside nurses have the organizational capacity and resources needed to deliver timely care and continuous surveillance during heat events.

This research builds on CHOPR research that establishes the link between nurse staffing and the work environment and myriad patient outcomes, including mortality.

The authors emphasize that heat-related illness management requires immediate, resource-intensive nursing surveillance to prevent complications including multiorgan failure and rapid patient deterioration. Insufficient staffing and inadequate support can severely limit a health system's ability to deliver standard-of-care treatments during sudden volume surges caused by heat waves.

To prepare for increasing environmental public health emergencies, the editorial outlines actionable recommendations across research, education, practice and policy, urging health system leaders to incorporate nurse staffing and workplace environment investments directly into disaster preparedness planning.

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