Using Nursing Theory to Improve the Teaching of Engineering Practice

Engineering education includes both classroom training in sciences and professional skills as well as learning-through-doing to integrate practice and engineering design into the future licensed Professional Engineer (PE). In a similar manner, nursing education includes both classroom training in sciences and professional skills as well as learningthrough doing to integrate practice and caring into the future licensed Registered Nurse (RN). From the mid-19 century until modern day, the fields of environmental engineering and community health nursing have worked side-by-side to prevent disease while promoting health and wellness. This paper provides a synthesis of previously published case studies by the author documenting collaborative learning among environmental engineers and community health nurses. During a decade of working together, Florence Nightingale’s Environmental Theory served as the organizing principle for teaching practice to the environmental engineers as facilitated through coaching and interaction with community health nurses. This paper provides a side-byside comparison of the professions of engineering and nursing, and includes the results of assessments using mixed methods to document the impacts of exposure to nursing practice on the formation of emergent engineers.