The ‘sustainability lens’: A framework for nurse education that is ‘fit for the future’

SummaryIn this paper we describe and justify a framework for curriculum development that uses the concept of a sustainability lens. This is based on an understanding that we construct our social worlds and create a reality based upon what Gadamer (1977) called ‘prejudices’. The social world of nurse education has its own prejudices, referred to by Scrimshaw (1983) as ‘ideologies’. These form often taken for granted assumptions and values about what education is. The framework bases itself on how sustainability conceptualises health, and 4 approaches to health care delivery, along two continua of individual–society and illness–wellbeing. Further, we argue that in response to a wider education for sustainability agenda, nurse educators could develop their own sustainability lens and bring it to bear on this framework to interpret professional standards in a new way.