Environmental health and nursing: implementation of educational workshops with employees of general services

Background: to describe the contribution of educational workshops on environmental health for employees of general services at a public institution of higher education. Method: exploratory, descriptive research with a qualitative approach. For the collection, a questionnaire with subjective and objective questions was used, and the steps of pretest, educational workshop and post-test wereincluded in March and April 2015, with 55 employees. For data analysis,thematic and categories were prepared. Results: the themes consisted of the following: Interference of the environment where they live in their own health and the health of the family and community; Understanding of environmental health; Difficulty in maintaining the environment clean; and perception of the importance of hand hygiene. Conclusion: people have fragmented knowledge about the concept of clean environment and its importance in maintaining health on Earth. It was clear that, after the educational workshops on the theme, there was improvement in the individuals’ understanding on environmental health.