Congratulations to the Severn Deanery, which has been placed in the top three for Bristol Zoo’s Walk of Fame ‘Green Team’ award!
Sustainability has become a major agenda for the Severn Deanery in response to the NHS government target of reducing carbon emissions by 80% by 2050 and innovative activities over 2012 have included:
GP Sustainability Scholarship Programme
Paul Main, Deputy Director and Associate Dean for the Severn Deanery School of Primary Care has had accepted for publication in the journal Education for Primary Care later this year a paper: "A Sustainability Scholarship programme in the Severn Deanery's School of Primary Care: a case study"
A case study on the sustainability scholars’ scheme which the Severn Deanery School of Primary Care launched three years ago has also been published on the web site of the Centre for Sustainable Healthcare (CSH). Scholars receive educational supervision from CSH. The first two scholars did small projects and have had articles published on sustainability in the British Journal of General Practice and InnovAiT the RCGP journal for trainees.
The third scholar is half way through his post. For more information, please see the case study here.
Work that the current GP scholar is looking at includes:
- An Inhaler Campaign to do with the high carbon footprint of 'traditional' metered dose inhalers vs. Dry powder Inhalers
- an NHS Forest project planning a 'health trail' around a GP practice with signs and newly planted trees in order to encourage people to take exercise and enjoy their local environment.
Sustainability Foundation Fellowship
The Severn Deanery Foundation School recruited its first Sustainability Foundation Fellow in 2012. The Foundation Sustainability Fellow receives support from the GP Sustainability Fellow in addition to support from the Foundation School. See Amy Alsop's blog here.
This year’s Fellow conducted a study to see if medication being disposed of conforms to hospital policy (out of date medication or medication issued from non-hospital pharmacy that patients no longer require should be disposed of). She found that 1012 tablets were thrown away over a three week period on one ward, equating to a total cost of £100.80. Over a year the cost of the disposed of medication would have been £15,600 for the ward and roughly £280,000 for the hospital. The results pose interesting questions, for example, could anything be done with these medications, rather than dispose of them? Could unopened medication be reused? What are the obstacles to this? Is there a way of reducing the amount of medications disposed of in hospitals, like returning them to the pharmacy they came from? Could GPs issue fewer tablets with each prescription therefore lowering the number of medications disposed of in hospitals?
Carbon footprint study of travel to GP training programmes
The Severn Deanery GP Junior Business Associate from UWE is undertaking a sustainability project. The JBA will be analysing the carbon emissions and the cost to the Severn Deanery of providing travel to GP trainees rotating in training programmes all over the southwest. This will involve interviewing TPD/APD’s in order to gather information on the quality of training programmes, and handing out questionnaires to trainees to gather their opinions on the cost of travel, quality of training programmes and their general opinions on sustainable development. Once this information has been gathered, the JBA will then look into ways of how the NHSSW can reduce their carbon emissions.
Sustainability masterclass
A Sustainability Masterclass was held by the Severn Deanery in 2012 facilitated by Drs Trevor Thompson, Tim Ballard & Sally Aston (Sustainability Scholar)
Deanery-wide activities
Sustainability has been added to the agenda for discussion at TPD meetings at the Deanery to help encourage schools to fund sustainable fellows within their schools and to consider this area in all aspects of curriculum development and training.
The first Severn Deanery Green Survey was carried out within the Severn Deanery helping to drive forward initiatives to engage core staff in this area in future. The results have been presented to Deanery staff. Data has also been collected on the energy consumption and carbon footprint of the Deanery building in comparison to other similar organisations, which represents a hugely important piece of work which it is hoped, will be presented to executive and staff members.
The Severn Deanery Green Team are trained facilitators in ‘Carbon Conversations’ and hope to deliver engaging and interactive workshops covering many different aspects of carbon reduction to help educate and engage staff further in this area.
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