HEALTHCARE
show, for each of these seventeen SDGs, that we had relevant projects going. Furthermore, we were also able to show that the hospital is engaged with sustainable entrepreneurship. Through UNITAR (the United Nations Institute for Training and Research) we were the first Flemish hospital to receive a certificate in order to prove this.” The policy cycle of the hospital includes, among other things, the possibility for the different branches to explain their own sustainability efforts. This way, all of these policies were included in the different SDGs. This way, Karl Zwinnen was able to obtain a full and comprehensive image of what is going on, and also a broader perspective of the difficulties. This way, everything related to water proved to be a great challenge. Waste also seems to be a concern. Take, for example, everything that has to do with plastic, metal, and beverage cartons. Due to hygiene, drinking fountains in hospitals do not constitute a solution. Glass bottles, on the other hand, are impractical for those who work in the hospital. All of this makes it very difficult to reduce the amount of plastic, metal, and beverage cartons by sixteen tons per year without having to cut into the quality of care or into the wellbeing of the employees.
The right direction The hospital will continue with its sustainable way of working, though the organisation no longer works according to the certificate. “By working intensively in the domain of sustainability, and by letting ourselves be guided by the SDGs, we were able to learn a lot,” says Karl. “This way, we can now use this knowledge in the new infrastructure. During the authorisation procedure, for example, we of the designing team have also included sustainability into the list of the award criteria for the tenders. This way, we can be sure that at least with regards to the design, sustainability is being taken into consideration. That is very important.” “In terms of keeping the topic alive, we
also try to communicate more internally about where we stand with regards to sustainability,” he continues. “And I also notice that more and more people in the hospital are engaged with the subject. In the operating room, for example, people
IFHE DIGEST 2023
are aware of the amount of packaging which they use. They are now seriously thinking about how they can manage this issue. I also sincerely get the feeling that, if we keep on promoting and stressing this, things will automatically head into the right direction.” Would he recommend that other hospitals also participate in such a sustainability procedure? “Yes, as a matter of fact I would. And this does not necessarily need to happen in order to obtain the certificate, although this can be seen as an incentive to try harder – in the end, you really want to obtain that certificate. But the most important part is that, through this whole process, you will better understand how everything works and how everything is connected with each other.”
Learning from each other Karl Zwinnen is a long-time member of the professional association
ZORG.tech and the contact with colleagues from other organisations is a big advantage for him. “You get the opportunity to talk to people of other hospitals as colleagues,” he says. “Recently, someone new started working in our section, someone that had been working in the private sector. This person thinks it’s really incredible how we can just pick up the phone to call to another hospital to ask for some advice. Everyone helps each other, and this is deemed as completely normal – something hardly imaginable in the industrial sector.” A chemical engineer, Karl had also
worked in the industrial sector prior to starting to work for the hospital. He also worked as a consultant for several companies. He says that the step towards healthcare had certainly been a conscious decision. “In the last couple of years, I felt that everything was very much driven by money. My last employer was a publicly listed company, where each month the figures had to be submitted to the board. To be perfectly honest, I thought that this was not okay. In the healthcare sector, things are totally different, of course. Here it’s all about quality and about providing the best possible care to people that are in need of help. Money plays a part in all of
this, but it’s not the main issue.” But healthcare and industry can really learn a lot from each other. This has actually been the subject of a presentation that Karl once gave together with a colleague of another Belgian hospital, AZ Damiaan, who had also worked in the private sector before. “The hospital of course has to provide personal care to the patients, but we also should implement the basic ideas of the industry,” explains Karl. “With regards to the facility services - and to make it very clear: only with regards to the facility services - the industrial techniques and the industrial way of working should be implemented. Technically speaking, we are talking about a factory here with a lot of techniques that are coming together and with an operational reliability that is crucial.” But he has now concluded that industry can learn from healthcare? Or is it sometimes better to leave things as they are? “In one section, I sometimes think that things are still as they were years ago,” says Karl. “That’s when I want to look how we can make things more efficient. Well, a lot of times, afterwards you come to the conclusion that it’s better to leave things as they are, because things are functioning better when left unchanged. Innovation for innovation’s sake is not necessarily a good thing.”
And yes, Karl Zwinnen feels involved in the healthcare process, although he doesn’t stand alongside the patient’s bed. “You want the best for the patients, also from the perspective of the technical department,” Karl concludes. “To give you one example: this morning we had a meeting where we discussed a new nurse call system. The technicians already had an idea about which system it should be, based on their experiences with regards to its maintenance, its exploitation ... on moments like that, you have to take a step back, in order to ask yourself who’s the one for whom you’re doing all this: the patients and the medical staff. They have to be involved in the decision of what it should be, and we have to act in order to manage this as good as possible.”
l Timothy Vermeir is a Belgian journalist and editor-in-chief of the magazines ZORG Magazine, Zorg & Techniek, and INFUUS.
95
IFHE
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97
