HEALTHCARE & SUS TAINABI L I T Y
Children’s Hospital service, embedded within the University Hospitals of Leicester. The University Hospitals of Leicester is a large university teaching hospital with 1,959 inpatient beds and 16,000 employees. While personally being aware of the environmental impact of healthcare, I was alerted to the hugely detrimental effect the NHS is having on the environment by Professor Rashid Gatrade OBE, professor of paediatrics at the Manor Hospital, who has founded a NGO called World Against Single-Use Plastic with a missionary zeal to highlight the over use and environmental dangers of plastic to the world.
Thanks to the impetus and the inspiration
from Prof. Gatrade, I have begun to implement the following small steps in the Leicester Children’s Hospital services: l The creation of a Leicester Children’s Hospital Green team with the strap Line “Lets Turn our NHS Blue, Green”. Numerous staff have signed up to join the Green Team to help raise awareness, contribute ideas and implement change.
l Replaced single-use plastic and polysytrene cups with paper cups and plastic straws with paper straws. Plastic spoons are being replaced by wooden spoons or metallic spoons.
l Collecting and recycling used crisp packets which can be converted blankets.
l Collecting and recycling used Biro pens that are made into park benches and trash cans. (Terracycle recycles hard to recycle waste and has been the driving force behind such innovative programmes.)
l Recycling the tops of milk bottles into bottle boards by recycling companies such as Storm Board. Aggregates of these milk bottle tops are moulded into bottle boards. These bottle boards are converted into waterproof furniture – such as wall cladding, tables or even benches.
l Thanks to a highly successful ‘Gloves Off’ campaign, lead by Great Ormond Street and published in the Nursing Times in
MARCH 2021
2019, highlighting the fact that the NHS uses 1.4 billion gloves every year, the Leicester Children’s Hospital has now begun to reduce the inappropriate use of nonsterile gloves in COVID-free patients by following the very clear and sensible Royal College of Nursing guidelines.7 Wearing non-sterile gloves has become second nature, particularly due to COVID. However, as the vast majority of NHS activity is not related to COVID, following the RCN guideline, while simultaneously doing a risk assessment of each clinical situation, will lead to a decline in the inappropriate use of non-sterile gloves in UHL.
l Pharmacy is in the process of swapping large plastic bags, used to dispense large quantities of medicines to patients, to paper bags
Other eco-vironmental measures have included: l Water wastage: In order to keep the ICU and Ward taps free of Pseudomonas and Legionella, it is mandatory that taps are flushed regularly which can lead to a significant amount of wastage of water as taps are often left on and forgotten about with water literally going down the drain. Taps which are used regularly throughout the day don’t need flushing as a routine and those that are not used regularly will be flushed for no more than one minute.
l The hospital is exploring the use of reusable sharps bins – a practice already well established in Northampton General Hospital and University Hospitals of Coventry. Re-usable sharps bins, like most eco-vironmental issues, have the dual benefit of being environmentally friendly and more economical.
l Encouraging staff to print only if necessary and setting the printer default position to printing on both sides of each sheet of paper when it is deemed necessary to print documents emails etc.
These are just a few examples of a large number of ideas that are being shared and disseminated. These ideas represent the beginning of a long journey, as it is time for the NHS to address its enormous climate footprint, to be the anchors of resilience for the communities that they serve, and to become advocates for environmental health and justice.
References: 1 Health Care’s Climate Footprint: Healthcare without harm ARUP Sept 20119
2 Health Care’s Climate Footprint: Healthcare without harm ARUP Sept 20119
3
https://nuffieldtrust.org.uk/news-item/the environment needs to be higher up on the NHS agenda
4
https://www.gosh.nhs.uk/news/gloves-are-off 5 Plastics and Health: The Hidden cost of a Plastic Planet:
www.ciel.org/plasticandhealth
6 The American Journal of Surgery VOLUME 217, ISSUE 4, P634-638, APRIL 01, 2019
7
https://www.rcn.org.uk/professional -development / publications/pdf006922
About the authors
Dr. Sanjiv Nichani OBE is a senior consultant paediatric intensivist at Leicester Children’s Hospital and East Midlands Congenital Heart Centre. He is also the founder of Healing Little Hearts – a charity based in Leicestershire sending teams of surgeons and specialists to India to perform life-saving open heart surgery on babies and children free of charge. He has been awarded an OBE for his services within the field of medicine and charity. Dr. Sahil Nichani is an F2 foundation year doctor at the University Hospitals of Leicester.
WWW.CLINICALSERVICESJOURNAL.COM l 25
CSJ
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