This article by CSH's Sustainable Surgery Fellow, Chantelle Rizan, and co-authors, provides greenhouse gas emission factors for the different healthcare waste streams in the UK.
Article: Environmental impact of Personal Protective Equipment supplied to health and social care services in England in the first six months of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Background: Health-care services are necessary for sustaining and improving human wellbeing, yet they have an environmental footprint that contributes to environment-related threats to human health.
Sustainability has been recognised as a domain of quality in healthcare, and building it into quality improvement (QI) is a practical way to drive incremental change towards a more ethical, sustainable health system.
Nephrologist, Charlie Tomson, gives an overview of the challenge of reducing carbon in the NHS and potential solutions - from energy and waste reduction to Sustainable Care Pathways.
Section 8.6 of the new BTS/SIGN Guideline for the management of asthma highlights the environmental impact of metered dose inhalers (pMDI) and recommends that inhalers with low global-warming potential (GWP) should be used when likely to be equally effective.
Are you confident in teaching patients how to use their inhalers? The first step in improving environmental sustainability of inhaler use is to ensure that people use the correct technique to get the drug to where it is needed.
Asthma is very common. Almost 10% of people living in the European Union have a diagnosis of asthma. Among children, asthma is the most common chronic medical condition.
Realising the health benefits of acting on air pollution
This report on air pollution describes the current problem, the reasons it exists and the critical need to resolve it, and includes high level recommendations on the measures required to act on it.
The Royal College of Physicians published a new report 'Outpatients: the future – adding value through sustainability' which seeks to re-evaluate the purpose of outpatient care and align those objectives with modern-day living and expectations.
This is the most recent carbon/natural resources footprint of health and social care in England, based on 2017 data. Of note, the greenhouse gas emissions from metered dose inhalers are estimated at 0.85 Mt CO2e, which is around 3.2% of total emissions for the sector.
Sustainable Development Unit, NHS England & Public Health England
This example driver diagram shows how principles of sustainable clinical practice can be applied to improve respiratory inhaler prescribing. Hopefully it shows a holistic approach (MDI>DPI is not the whole story...).
The Centre for Sustainable Healthcare is recruiting to a new full-time, permanent position based at least two days per week in our office in Oxford. Application deadline 10 February.
Sustainability has been recognised as a domain of quality in healthcare, and building it into quality improvement (QI) is a practical way to drive incremental change towards a more ethical, sustainable health system.
Nephrologist, Charlie Tomson, gives an overview of the challenge of reducing carbon in the NHS and potential solutions - from energy and waste reduction to Sustainable Care Pathways.