The College Centre for Quality Improvement is excited to announce its first Sustainability Month aimed at providing teams with ideas and resources to work towards a more sustainable service.
Non-members: £55pp to access all content across the month
Sign up for the upcoming Sustainability Month in June
The College sees sustainability as a broad remit which focuses on a variety of topics including wellbeing. The core principles of practising sustainable psychiatry are:
Prioritise prevention – preventing poor mental health can reduce mental health need and therefore ultimately reduce the burden on health services (prevention involves tackling the social and environmental determinants alongside the biological determinants of health).
Empower individuals and communities – this involves improving awareness of mental health problems, promoting opportunities for self-management and independent living, and ensuring patients and carers are at the centre of decision-making. It also requires supporting community projects that improve social networks, build new skills, support employment (where appropriate) and ensure appropriate housing.
Improve value – this involves delivering interventions that provide the maximum patient benefit for the least cost by getting the right intervention at the right time, to the right person, while minimising waste.
Consider carbon – this requires working with providers to reduce the carbon impacts of interventions and models of care (e.g., emails instead of letters, tele-health clinics instead of face-to-face contact). Reducing over-medication, adopting a recovery approach, exploiting the therapeutic value of natural settings and nurturing support networks are examples that can improve patient care while reducing economic and environmental costs.
Staff sustainability – this requires actively supporting employees to maintain their health and well-being. Contributions to the service should be recognised and effective teamworking facilitated. Employees should be encouraged to develop their skills and supported to access training, mentorship, and supervision.
A sustainable workforce should incorporate what a lot of us think when it comes to sustainability; appropriate recycling, using more climate-friendly modes of transport or access to green spaces. But it also envisions a place of work that promotes, supports, and encourages staff wellbeing. For the NHS to effectively run, their work in psychiatry should optimise patient and staff well-being.
A program of webinars will be released shortly which will include an introduction to the College’s sustainability principles, an overview on the NHS national ambition around sustainable healthcare, and innovative ideas around sustainable practice from services across the UK.
For further information, please contact:
- Email: harriet.clarke@rcpsych.ac.uk
- Contact Name: Harriet Clarke