by Dr Rene Ewe
Climate change is widely recognised as a health emergency. The GMC, NHS and WHO have emphasised the importance of teaching sustainable healthcare principles to medical students. The Planetary Health Report Card, a student-led review of sustainable healthcare education in the United Kingdom demonstrated huge variability in the level of integration into the core curriculum. At Imperial College London, we are making changes to our primary care curriculum to better equip our future doctors with the skills they will need to meet the NHS’s Net Zero initiative and to meet the changing healthcare demands of the global population. Tutors have reported that lack of familiarity with the principles of sustainable healthcare as a core barrier to teaching.
As part of this workshop, we will hear from our own students about the work they have been doing to drive changes in the curriculum. They will discuss the reasons why sustainable healthcare is so important, including the concept of the triple bottom line which highlights the economic, health and environmental benefits of greener health initiatives. We will then explore the challenges we face with integrating sustainability within the curriculum, and will invite an open discussion from attendees to help us further understand how we can support teaching of sustainable healthcare. We will discuss some of the successes the Department of Undergraduate Primary Care have had so far to galvanise our tutor community to push this further. We will round off this workshop with an open dialogue on your experiences of sustainable healthcare.