9
Unit 9: Making healthcare greener
Unit opener page Be aware of, and arouse interest in, the topics for the unit
Draw students’ attention to the main photo. Ask: What can you see? (A doctor carrying a globe.) What does it mean? Accept any reasonable answers at this stage, as the idea is to invite interest in the unit. (The main meaning is that we have a responsibility to care for our environment.)
Get students to look at the Wordle. Ask how many words they know, but do not give feedback at this stage.
Make a difference
Recognize target vocabulary for the unit: environment Improve understanding of issues around carbon footprint
Introduction Write the word waste on the board and elicit types of waste (e.g., food, paper, etc.). Then point out that waste can also be a verb – to waste electricity. Elicit ideas about the meaning of the title of the unit, Making healthcare greener (a call to undertake environmentally friendly initiatives in healthcare that are good for the environment). Also focus on the title of the lesson, Make a difference, meaning: try to act in ways that make a difference to the environment.
Content note A greenhouse is a small glass house used to grow plants. The glass windows keep heat from the Sun inside, keeping the plants warm so they grow better. Our planet works in a similar way: the Sun’s rays enter Earth’s atmosphere, which consists of a number of gases, and reach the surface. Land, water and the biosphere absorb this energy. Gases in the atmosphere trap energy from the sun (like a greenhouse) and prevent the heat from escaping back into space. Partly due to our activity on the planet, more and more unhealthy greenhouse gases don’t escape and cause trouble for our planet. Burning fossil fuels, and using things like aerosols, plastics, etc., produce CO2
and
other gases which add to the problem. Exercise A shows a number of ways in which healthcare institutions like a hospital can contribute to this by polluting, using more energy than necessary and creating waste.
The pronunciation of CO2 is: \si…´U"tu…\, with the stress on 2.
A
Check the meaning and pronunciation of all the words in the box, particularly the stress of noun–noun phrases:
"climate change e"missions e"quipment food lights masks medi"cations po"llution sharps
waste "water "X-rays
NOTE ‘Sharps’ is the healthcare term for injection needles of all kinds. It is always plural.
Deal with the meanings – use the photographs to assist, e.g., Which picture shows X-rays? Which picture shows emissions?, etc. You may want to draw a greenhouse, or show a photo of one, to show the way heat from the Sun can get in, but not out so easily (because of the properties of glass) = the ‘greenhouse effect’. Set for pairwork. Monitor. Feed back, getting pairs with the best connections to share them with the class.
Possible answers
1. sharps 2. masks 3. medications 4. X-rays 5. lights 6. equipment 7. emissions 8. food 9. water
(Underlined words are from the word box) The connections between the photographs are that they are all examples of waste generated by a hospital through use of its equipment. All of the things shown, together, can contribute to pollution and, through that, to climate change. • Sharps (injection needles), masks, medication and X-rays are examples of medical (high) risk waste.
• Lights and equipment are examples of waste through use of electricity.
• Food refers to the uneaten food that is prepared and then thrown away each day.
• Water refers to the use of water in hospitals and the fact that a lot of it is wasted through over-use.
• Emissions refers to the greenhouse gases emitted through a hospital’s chimneys (as a result of, e.g., heating a hospital, preparing food, etc.).
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