GreenED Programme – The hopes for the future
Dr Frances Balmer, ST4 and member of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) Environmental Specialist Interest Group, writes about the newly launched GreenED programme and her hopes for the future of sustainable emergency care
4th July sees the launch of the RCEM GreenED programme; it is a landmark day in the journey towards sustainable emergency healthcare.
The climate emergency is a health crisis, affecting our patients, our departments and the way in which we deliver healthcare. Heatwaves in 2022 resulted in increased hospital admissions, 2895 heat-related deaths, and hospital overheating events causing equipment failure, increased patient morbidity, cancelled elective procedures and staff sickness.
Healthcare itself is contributing to climate change, with healthcare emissions accounting for 4% of the carbon footprint of the UK. All nations of the UK have established targets, enshrined in law, to transition to net zero healthcare over the next 15-20 years. These targets represent a challenge and an opportunity; to realise what low carbon emergency care looks like in the context of an overstretched healthcare system requires innovation and imagination.
To meet this challenge, the GreenED programme was developed by the College Environmental Specialist Interest Group. The underlying aim was to identify the carbon hotspots in emergency departments, generate and test interventions to address them based on the best evidence available, and measure the impact where possible. By addressing high carbon areas, such as nitrous oxide and inhaler use, over-investigation and unnecessary waste, the environmental impact of eight pilot sites was reduced by 15 tonnes CO2e. Additional benefits reported included financial savings, increased staff morale and improved patient experience.
What began as a simple framework of actions in 2019, has since evolved into a fully integrated accreditation package in 2023, with an online interactive portal, support network, toolkit, resources and built in carbon calculators, supported by NHS England. The result is that GreenED is an “off-the-shelf” package which makes it simple for an emergency department to reduce their environmental impact, and to prove their progress by applying for accreditation by RCEM.
The beauty of GreenED is that it is collaborative and empowering. Any member of an emergency department can initiate and drive change. The data collected will feed into our understanding of what low carbon emergency healthcare looks like, and inform future iterations of the programme. In this way, GreenED is responsive and adaptive, allowing efforts to be concentrated, tailored to the changing evidence and scaled up.
It is this kind of shared action that we need to tackle a problem as big as the climate crisis. I’d encourage all emergency departments to visit greened.rcem.ac.uk and join us. Together we can make a significant impact, protect the health and wellbeing of our patients and create a greener and brighter future for generations to come.
1 https://www.roundourway.org/our-impact/nhs-overheating
3 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aoGP2SR6bZW77lNt–YCwKN35L7DA_Pu/view
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