At RCSI, a new professional development course focused on sustainable healthcare will provide training to health professionals in any area of practice, and across the world, on how to apply the principles of sustainable healthcare to their own practice.
Healthcare saves lives, but it is also a significant contributor to climate change and environmental damage.
Whether it’s anaesthetic gases, nitrous oxide, single-use plastics, improper disposal of toxic waste, over-prescription of medications which enter the water system and damage biodiversity, almost every diagnostic and treatment activity you can think of has an impact on the environment.
These activities use significant amounts of water and energy, contribute to generating waste and release high levels of greenhouse gases and other environmental polluters.
So, as we know that environmental damage and pollution cause harm to wider human populations, is a better way possible?
RCSI's new free and fully online professional development course involves 16 hours of self-study materials delivered through a mix of formats. With flexible components, learners can progress at their own pace.
Developed by Professor Debbi Stanistreet, Associate Professor and Head of Department Public Health and Epidemiology at RCSI School of Population Health, in conjunction with her colleague Dr Samira B. Jabakhanji, an expert in planetary health and sustainable healthcare, the course is all part of RCSI’s wider commitment to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Minimise environmental degradation
RCSI is currently ranked fifth in the world for SDG3, ‘Good Health and Wellbeing’. The University is actively working towards the European Green Deal’s goal of net zero emissions by 2050. This course aligns with this and other SDGs, including 'Responsible Consumption and Production', 'Climate Action', 'Reduced Inequalities' and 'Partnerships.
Participants on this course learn how to build resilience to the health effects of climate change alongside, crucially, strategies for implementing sustainable healthcare practices in their own fields to minimise further environmental degradation.
Healthcare's carbon footprint
Some of the changes are simple and familiar to our own lives and homes: use fewer polluting energy sources and get better insulation. Health professionals on this course, however, will also learn how disease prevention and health promotion is the biggest way to reduce the carbon footprint of healthcare. Put simply, less illness – and, especially, less chronic illness – means fewer interventions and, therefore, a reduction in healthcare’s carbon footprint.
As well as advocating to tackle the underlying social, personal, environmental and economic causes and consequences of ill-health, participants will also learn about the importance of patient education and empowerment, and how this can help people to adopt more healthy and sustainable lifestyles.
For instance, more active modes of transport such as walking or cycling benefit people’s health and the environment, with less air pollution, in turn, leading to less chronic illness. These co-benefits for human and planetary health are at the core of building a more sustainable healthcare sector.
Telemedicine, more targeted patient interventions and a reduction in unnecessary prescribing can all help to reduce medicine’s environmental footprint, while sustainability measures can also be built into the production of medical technologies.
Becoming 'net zero'
For most health professionals, these measures have never been a part of their medical education to date.
There is no avoiding change, however, with the European Green Deal applying to healthcare as much as it does to every other sector.
Here, the Health Service Executive has signed up to the 2050 pledge of becoming ‘net zero’, and implementation is underway. A Certificate in Sustainable Healthcare will support health professionals on this path.
RCSI is committed to achieving a better and more sustainable future through the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
