Interview Summary

Shanda Demorest is a climate nurse. In her role, Shanda leads a team of people to work directly with hospitals and help reduce their environmental impacts by lessening waste production, using more sustainable products, and shifting away from the use of toxic chemicals.
Shanda grew up in a rural community in La Crescent, Minnesota, where she was always in nature participating in outdoor activities like hiking. With her childhood experiences, she became inspired to protect the environment.
Before she was a climate nurse, Shanda was a cardiac nurse. However, her passion for the environment influenced her to change her career and become a climate nurse.
Shanda emphasizes that when pursuing a career in medicine, you do not need to have everything figured out right away. In fact, she references her own experience of changing her career to show how making bold career choices can sometimes be very beneficial.
To become a climate nurse, Shanda first received her bachelor’s degree in nursing with a minor in horticulture. Afterwards, while still working part-time as a cardiac nurse, she went back to graduate school for three years to receive a doctorate in nursing practice with a specialization in health innovation and leadership.

Climate Nurse Interview With Shanda Demorest

What does a day in your life as a climate nurse look like?

I work remotely, so most of the time I am at the computer, and my work now is very strategy-oriented. Currently, I have a team of ten different people, and we set up the structure for those team members to work with hospitals to reduce their climate impacts. My current role is much less hands-on than my previous roles.

In the past, I worked more as a climate nurse around environmental consulting, meaning that I would collaborate with sustainability professionals who worked within hospitals. When working with these sustainability professionals, I would help coach them around how they could reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, reduce their chemical footprint, and be more climate resilient. A lot of this work involved me speaking from my experience as a nurse to help these leaders in healthcare understand some of their opportunities to lessen the climate impacts of hospitals.

My current job is really nice because the organization that I work with has a policy where we work five days one week and four days the next week, which is great for my work-life balance. I also have a lot of flexibility with my job, especially post-Covid in the remote work world.

What does being a climate nurse mean to you?

As a climate nurse, instead of people being my patients, the planet is my patient. Reducing harm to the environment is a big part of my job, as well as understanding and finding solutions to how climate change and environmental degradation impact human health. This is very important because when we have a healthier environment, we will automatically have healthier people.

The healthcare industry’s contribution to climate change is particularly significant in the United States. There are estimates that healthcare contributes to about eight and a half percent of the entire country’s greenhouse gas emissions. When we think about greenhouse gas emissions leading to climate change, we can also think about how climate change leads to all sorts of human health impacts, which was something I saw as a nurse.

The effects of climate change, such as air pollution, extreme heat, and severe weather like hurricanes, flooding, and tornadoes can have big impacts on our lives. For example, when something like a hurricane happens, there can be severe mental health impacts on a population because of the loss and grief that follows. Also, there are different infectious diseases that are more common due to climate change. With healthcare contributing to the problem, it creates this vicious cycle of people getting sick, needing care from the healthcare system, and yet the healthcare system is negatively contributing to the problem at the same time.

Can you tell us about yourself?

My name is Shanda Demorest, and I am a nurse by background. In 2013, I graduated from nursing school and went right into cardiovascular telemetry nursing at Abbott Northwestern Hospital, where I worked for seven years. During my time in nursing school and in my early years working bedside, I began to plan how I could become an environmental nurse. With this goal in mind, I took horticulture courses during undergrad, followed by a graduate program that focused on health innovation and leadership (which I completed while still practicing at the bedside). Basically, I was learning how to be a changemaker, work with systems, and work with finance. I was also always using an environmental lens in all of my coursework and my internships.

All of my work and experience set me up for the job that I have now, which is the senior director for our network at Practice Greenhealth. Essentially, Practice Greenhealth is the nation’s leading network for hospitals that are working on environmental sustainability. In my role, I lead a few teams that work directly with hospitals to decrease their greenhouse gas impact, build climate resilience, decrease waste, and shift away from the use of toxic chemicals.

My job at Practice Greenhealth involves a lot of consulting, event hosting, and leadership development, all with the goal of decreasing the environmental impact of the healthcare system. Every day, I am applying my prior nursing experience and knowledge to reduce the climate impact of healthcare.

Full Q&A With Shanda Demorest

What is your favorite part of being a climate nurse?

The best part of being a climate nurse is the mission that I have because I truly value my work and believe it is making a positive difference in our world. A lot of people don’t have the opportunity to connect their personal values with their actual work, but I do every single day.

How much education is required to be a climate nurse?

I completed a four-year bachelor’s degree in nursing, and at the same time got a minor in horticulture from the College of Food and Natural Sciences. Afterwards, I took the GRE, which is the standard test that you need to take to get into graduate school. I worked one year full-time as a cardiac nurse before I attended graduate school. While in graduate school, I worked part-time, graduating in three years with a doctorate in nursing practice with a specialization in health innovation and leadership.

How did you become interested in being a climate nurse?

I grew up in a rural community in La Crescent, Minnesota, which is located along the Mississippi River. I basically grew up outdoors because my family hiked, gardened, hunted, and spent so much time in nature. This gave me a certain lens through which I saw the world starting from a young age.

Later, when I went to nursing school, I observed how it was very resource-intensive and wasteful. This led me to wonder why people weren’t learning more about our impacts on the planet and how we can be more mindful of how we use resources. So, I knew from early on that I wanted to find a way to connect the environment with healthcare.

What is the career outlook for a climate nurse?

I would say that the career outlook for a climate nurse is growing. Not only is it growing formally through jobs like mine, but it’s also growing because nurses throughout healthcare are being invited more frequently to be parts of green teams, sustainability committees, and to bring their personal perspectives into the environmental work that’s happening within healthcare.

What have you learned about yourself by being a climate nurse?

Even though I was really eager to expand my nursing role outside of direct patient care, the core elements of that role are still a huge part of what I do every day. For example, every day I support people and teams to accomplish their goals. The team of ten that I work with needs compassion, love, care, trust, and partnership, which are all things that nurses provide to patients. I had not anticipated that these elements from my traditional nursing role would carry over into my job as a climate nurse. However, I do believe that any role in healthcare will teach you values and skills that make you better at whatever else you do in life.

What are the biggest challenges of being a climate nurse?

One of the biggest challenges with my job is the political environment because it sometimes puts up barriers to progress on our environmental work in healthcare. There is pushback with the advocacy work, funding, and the leaders in healthcare who don’t understand how important climate health is to patients. Despite these challenges, we’re still seeing a lot of momentum in our work and I truly believe that we’re on the cutting edge of some transformational change.