Sustainability in your practice
There are many ways in which you can make your practice more sustainable.
Our Top Ten Tips guide for being a sustainable psychiatrist has some great suggestions for practice that combines environmental, social and economic sustainability. You could also consider choosing wisely when prescribing, emphasising prevention, and considering social interventions.
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.
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.
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
Finally, why not look to build on your own skills and expertise through training modules in sustainable healthcare such as: