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FTHub SPECIALIZATION COURSE

NAT-CARE — Nature Prescription in Healthcare Settings

LIVE ONLINE COURSE

  • Saturday & Sunday | 4–8 pm CET
  • 2027 | April 24 and 25
  • Live online sessions with a trainer
  • 2 sessions | 8 hours
  • 3-month access
  • 8 modules
  • 9 downloadable materials
  • 8 hours of video recordings
  • Level: Intermediate
  • English

490 €

490 €

Add to Cart
Add to Cart

Trainer

Manuela Renzi

This course trains nurses and health professionals to prescribe nature with the same rigor applied to any other non-pharmacological intervention. It covers clinical assessment and eligibility, safety and contraindications, dose design (frequency, intensity, duration, modality), integration into existing care pathways and clinical records, community asset mapping and referral, adherence support, and outcome monitoring with PROMs, PREMs, and clinical indicators. It is built around a ten-step prescribing workflow that the professional applies to real cases from day one.

Outcomes

What you'll gain

    • The Ten-Step Prescribing Workflow
      The course's central framework: a structured sequence that takes the professional from the first encounter with the person to long-term monitoring. Each step answers one clinical question and feeds the next: assessment, safety, level of support, protocol selection, prescription, pathway decision, instructions and referral, adherence, and adjustment. You work the full workflow on real or simulated cases.
    • What a Nature Prescription Is, and What It Is Not
      The three constitutive features that separate a clinical prescription from an informal recommendation: issued by a qualified professional, structured dose specification, and documentation within the care plan. How Nature Prescription relates to, and differs from, nature-based social prescribing, green exercise, and Forest Therapy protocols. The evidence base behind each mechanism, from stress regulation and attention restoration to affective response, physical activation, social connection, and emerging immune-environmental pathways.
    • Clinical Assessment, Eligibility, and Safety
      Comprehensive assessment across three dimensions: clinical and functional, psychosocial and motivational, contextual and environmental. Absolute contraindications, relative contraindications, and acceptable risk. Informed consent as both a safety instrument and a tool for engagement. A traffic light classification system that makes the eligibility decision explicit and defensible.
    • Nature Dose and Intervention Design
      How to specify frequency, intensity, duration, and modality so the prescription is reproducible and auditable. Reference ranges drawn from the literature. Selecting the modality and the environment according to the clinical objective, the capacities of the person, and the resources actually available. Progression logic, common design errors, and criteria for dynamic adjustment.
    • Integration into Care Pathways and Clinical Records
      How to embed the intervention in existing clinical circuits without creating new structures. Its place across prevention, treatment, and rehabilitation. Roles within the multiprofessional team, documentation in the electronic health record, and the organizational conditions that make implementation sustainable. Barriers, facilitators, and the fit with real clinical workflows.
    • Community Assets and Environmental Resources
      An asset-based approach applied to prescribing. A working typology of green and blue spaces, specialized facilities, structured community programs, and qualified professionals. How to build and maintain your own local asset map. The clinical decision between an autonomous pathway and a facilitated one, and how information returns to the prescribing professional.
    • Behavior Change and Adherence
      Why people follow or abandon health recommendations. The theoretical models behind non-adherence, motivational interviewing techniques, autonomous versus controlled motivation, and the design of realistic support and follow-up strategies that hold the intervention in place over time.
    • Monitoring, Evaluation, and Outcomes
      Selecting brief, valid, feasible instruments: PROMs, PREMs, and objective clinical indicators. Linking the intervention to nursing language (NANDA, NIC, NOC). Using follow-up data to decide whether to maintain, adjust, reinforce, close, or refer, without adding administrative burden or questionnaire fatigue.

Audience

Who is this course for?

    • Nurses working in clinical, community, or educational settings who want to incorporate Nature Prescription into routine practice
    • Nursing students seeking specific competencies in nature-based interventions
    • Nursing lecturers integrating preventive and sustainable care into curricula and continuing education
    • Family medicine, community health, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, and health social work professionals involved in person-centered and preventive care
    • Primary care and community health teams building structured referral pathways to local natural assets
    • FTHub Certified Forest Bathing Guides and Forest Therapy Practitioners working alongside health services who need to speak the clinical language of prescription, documentation, and outcomes
    • Health professionals responsible for implementing green health or social prescribing programs at institutional level

Course Framework

Course structure

MODULE 0 · How to Use This Program
  • Purpose, scope, and intended audience of the program
  • How the handbook, the toolkit, and the applied training work together
  • Modular architecture and recommended reading sequence
  • Operational definition and the three constitutive features
  • Mechanisms: stress regulation, attention restoration, affective response, physical activation, social connection
  • European and public health frameworks, One Health, and the strategic role of the nurse
  • Comprehensive assessment across clinical, psychosocial, and contextual dimensions
  • Risk, contraindications, professional liability, and informed consent
  • Person-centered decision-making and the traffic light classification
  • The four dose parameters: frequency, intensity, duration, modality
  • Reference ranges from the literature and selection of modality and setting
  • Adaptation to the person and the context, progression, review, and adjustment
  • Incorporating the intervention into existing care pathways
  • Team roles, health and community collaboration, documentation and continuity
  • Barriers, facilitators, scalability, and sustainability
  • Asset-based approach and a working typology of local resources
  • Building and maintaining a local asset map
  • Autonomous versus facilitated pathway, instructions, referral, and information return
  • Adherence as a dynamic, multifactorial process
  • Theoretical models of behavior change and autonomous motivation
  • Motivational interviewing, therapeutic communication, and follow-up support design
  • PROMs, PREMs, and objective clinical indicators
  • Linking NANDA diagnoses, NIC interventions, and NOC outcomes
  • Decision-making from follow-up data: maintain, adjust, reinforce, close, or refer
  • Full application of a Nature Prescription to a real case
  • Structured reflective journal on clinical decisions and uncertainty
  • Collaborative online session and a sustainability-oriented reflection

COURSE TOOLS & BONUS

What’s included

    • 1-year free Hub Seedlings Pro membership
    • FTHub NAT-CARE Specialization Certificate upon completion
    • Complete online course with live online lessons, practical tools, and readings
    • NAT-CARE Handbook, 8 modules of structured, evidence-based content with clinical micro-examples, clinical application keys, annexes, and full Vancouver referencing
    • NAT-CARE Toolkit Workbook, the ten-step prescribing workflow with assessment grids, support level matrix, protocol selection matrix, prescription form, instruction sheets, referral templates, and monitoring tools
    • Two-day applied training with case simulations, role-playing, and experiential components in nature
    • Self-assessment questionnaires, practical activities, and applied clinical cases in every module
    • Final applied assignment: a complete Nature Prescription documented end-to-end

ROOTED IN RESEARCH

Connection

NAT-CARE is an internationally funded project developed under Erasmus+ KA210-VET, built to integrate nature-based interventions into the continuing and formal education of health professionals across European health systems.

The curriculum was designed from a structured needs analysis combining expert consultation, focus groups, and a professional survey, alongside a comparative review of established European and North American programs. The methodology is informed by FTHub’s applied research through the FTI Lab and is updated as new findings emerge from the project and its international partners.

TRAINER

About the trainer

Manuela Renzi

FTHub Training and Capacity Building Director

Manuela brings over a decade of global experience in Naturopathy, Ecopsychology, Mindfulness, and Oriental Medicine to shape international, evidence-based nature health frameworks. She adapts the FTHub Method across diverse global contexts and leads EU-funded projects like NATURELAB. An author, speaker, and facilitator grounded in deep ecological literacy, Manuela advances culturally sensitive, scientifically robust nature interventions worldwide.

Evidence Base

Grounded in peer-reviewed science

Why this matters for your practice

FTHub courses are evidence-informed at every step. The evidence is not decorative; each module connects theory to field practice using the same scientific frameworks underpinning the FTHub Method.

LIVE ONLINE COURSE

  • Saturday & Sunday | 4–8 pm CET
  • 2027 | April 24 and 25
  • Live online sessions with a trainer
  • 2 sessions | 8 hours
  • 3-month access
  • 8 modules
  • 9 downloadable materials
  • 8 hours of video recordings
  • Level: Intermediate
  • English

490 €

Add to Cart

Trainer

Manuela Renzi

TESTIMONIALS

What the professionals say

Real experiences from the field.

Manuela Renzi
Training and Capacity Building Director at Forest Therapy Hub

Ana Estela Barbosa
Researcher at LNEC and Coordinator of R&I project NATURELAB

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FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions

NAT-CARE is FTHub’s specialization course in Nature Prescription for nurses and health professionals. It treats nature contact as a structured clinical intervention rather than general lifestyle advice, covering assessment and eligibility, safety and contraindications, dose design, integration into care pathways and clinical records, community asset mapping, referral, adherence, and outcome monitoring. It combines an eight-module handbook, a ten-step toolkit workbook, and a two-day applied training.

No. The primary professional reference is the nursing role, and the content is written for nurses, nursing students, and nursing lecturers. The principles and instruments are transferable to multidisciplinary teams, so family doctors, community health professionals, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, and health social workers also benefit. No formal prerequisite or FTHub certification is required.

The ten-step workflow is the operational core of the toolkit. Each step answers one clinical question and feeds the next: how the process works, whether Nature Prescription is appropriate and for whom, whether it is safe to prescribe now, how much support the person needs, which protocol fits, what exactly is prescribed, whether the pathway is autonomous or facilitated, how instructions and referral are delivered, what barriers may prevent adherence, and whether the intervention is working.

No. NAT-CARE complements clinical training, institutional protocols, and professional supervision. It is not a normative or legal document, and professionals are expected to work within their national and institutional frameworks on scope of practice, informed consent, data protection, and clinical liability.

NAT-CARE is a specialization course in Nature Prescription for nurses and health professionals. It introduces a ten-step prescribing workflow covering clinical assessment and eligibility, safety and contraindications, dose specification by frequency, intensity, duration, and modality, integration into care pathways and electronic health records, community asset mapping and referral, adherence support, and outcome monitoring with PROMs, PREMs, and clinical indicators.

It includes an eight-module handbook, a toolkit workbook, a two-day applied training, and a free 1-year Hub Seedlings Pro membership.

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