The aim of the project was to reduce linen usage by 30% at the New Victoria Hospital, Glasgow by 31st January 2022.
A PDSA cycle was adopted to determine whether the patient felt comfortable without sitting on a sheet or automatically receiving a blanket.
We asked patients to bring their own blankets to their HD session and to take them back home again.
We predicted that there would be financial savings, sustainability success and we would have a significant reduction in water usage. Staff and patient education was provided to support this transition.
The test was extremely successful. In actual fact, we reduced our linen usage by 80% in this dialysis unit. Our plan is now to adopt this change at other dialysis units in NHS GG&C.
Although I am completely delighted with this outcome I, unfortunately, cannot determine how much water and carbon we are saving.
My colleague has found one paper from 2014 which mentions linen use but other research seems very scant.
I wondered if anyone else had similar success or whether they had seen any supporting research for linen use/water and carbon saving?
Hi Rona,
that sounds great, I'd be keen to trial something similar on our main HD unit. I am currrently working with our sustainability lead to map the carbon footprint of our dialysis service including linen and food so I will get in touch once we have info on how this is being done
Hi Rona
To get a rough idea, how much greenhouse gas emissions you saved, you could look at the cost savings in pounds and multiply it by the emissions factor for laundry which is 0.192 kgCO2e/£. Reference: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/uks-carbon-footprint.
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