Sustainability in your practice
There are many ways in which you can make your practice more sustainable.
Top ten tips guide
Our Top Ten Tips guide for being a sustainable psychiatrist has some great suggestions for practice that combines environmental, social and economic sustainability.
Choosing wisely - deciding on care together
You could also consider choosing wisely when prescribing, emphasising prevention, and considering social interventions.
Inspiration for other ways to help
There are also many local opportunities for sustainability projects that you could lead on with your clinical team that could also make a difference to clinical care such as:
- Start a QI project aimed at reducing your team’s carbon emissions. (electricity use, travel etc) e.g Southern Healthcare’s award-winning example in 2019. The Centre for Sustainable Healthcare has released a publicly accessible toolkit for sustainable QI projects.
- Asking your ward or team to run a 'Green Ward' competition, facilitated by the Centre for Sustainable Healthcare.
- Setting up a community orchard or rewilding site (such as The Orchard Project and NHS forest) on your hospital site.
- Develop a Nature on Prescription scheme; the European Center for Environment & Human Health and University of Exeter's handbook on Nature on Prescription has lots of ideas on how to develop and implement a successful scheme in the new social prescribing landscape.
You never know, your project could get recognised in the Commitment to Sustainability prize in the Royal College of Psychiatry’s annual awards or the annual NHS Sustainability Awards.
If you're a trainee or medical student
As a trainee or medical student, why not consider inviting local speakers, or green practitioners to local and regional teaching programmes. You can also review papers looking at health and climate change and sustainable healthcare interventions at your local journal club
Training opportunities
Finally, why not look to build on your own skills and expertise through training modules in sustainable healthcare such as: