This is my first blog as the Royal College of Psychiatrists Research Fellow in Sustainability. The announcement of my appointment to this fellowship was made in April’s edition of the RCPsych Newsletter, but I had to complete my ST5 training year in general adult psychiatry before I started. Last Wednesday (7th August) was the big change over for trainee doctors and it was my first official day in this new post. It is great to get started.
This fellowship is an opportunity to get sustainability on the agenda in mental health. A major part of the Fellowship will be my work with the Centre for Sustainable Healthcare and the College over the next two years to develop a network of sustainability representatives across the UK. I will also be completing an M.D. at Warwick University, researching the methodology for sustainable assessment in mental health services.
My aim in this blog is to tell you about my activities over the next two years. I’ve never done a blog before and it feels rather narcissistic (!), but perhaps some of you may read it and learn more about what it means to improve the sustainability of mental health services and then spread the word to others. This fellowship is college funded and has the support and facilities of the college at hand. Please do get in touch with me or check out the mental health sustainability network at sustainablehealthcare.org.uk website to learn more or to get involved.
It was great to get the ball rolling by delivering a keynote speech on the last day of the RCPsych International Congress in Edinburgh last month. The RCPsych lead for sustainability, Dr Phil Davison, and I spoke about sustainable development in mental healthcare. We discussed clinical transformation as a crucial step in improving the sustainability of mental health services. Accounting for the carbon costs of a Trust has been the responsibility of estates and management, but buildings and energy use, account on average for only 22% of the total carbon footprint of an NHS Trust. The rest of the carbon footprint is related to clinical practice and current ways of working. As clinicians, we need to develop new, innovative ways to deliver high quality care that will enable significant reductions to our carbon cost. Principles of sustainable healthcare include focusing on disease prevention, patient empowerment and self-care, lean service delivery, and use of low-carbon technologies. During this fellowship I hope to increase the awareness of how incorporating these principles into our day-to-day practice as clinicians and, in a wider sense, into service improvements can achieve significant reductions to our carbon footprint. The NHS is the largest single greenhouse gas emitter in the public sector and contributes 25% of all public sector organisations. Full integration of these principles into clinical practice in the UK could have a large impact on these figures and enable significant reductions to the NHS carbon footprint.
There are many aspects to this fellowship and the first few days have been a little overwhelming. There are so many people to meet and sustainable opportunities to learn about. However, I have felt well supported by Dr Phil Davison and Frances Mortimer from the Centre for Sustainable Health care, as well as Mathew Cooke and Rob Lilywhite my academic supervisors. I have also enjoyed some initial explorative meetings to consider research projects.
This coming month I have a long list of people to meet including David Pencheon, director of the NHS sustainable development unit. I also have a lot of reading to do! On the horizon is the CleanMed Europe Conference on the 17-19 of September in Oxford. This conference is focusing on sustainable pathways to healthcare and has some great speakers including Sir Muir Gray, Chief Knowledge Officer of the NHS and Dr Neil Deuchar, Commissioning Lead for the RCPsych.
In my next blog I will tell you about my first month in the post and about my plans to create more of a sustainable presence at the college in more detail.
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