Additional material on Sustainable Healthcare

These next few steps in “Week 4” contain additional material on the subject sustainable healthcare, that we’ve already touched in Step 3.15 “sustainable healthcare”

We’ve been made aware that some steps on the subject of Sustainable Healthcare were mistakenly added to the course in Week 4. We have now removed any steps containing incomplete content but have left the remaining steps as a resource for you.

Since 1980 global greenhouse gas emissions have doubled, and human activity has removed about half the wild birds, mammals, fish, invertebrates and insects on our planet. The health implications of this are clear and terrifying. As Healthcare Professionals we should not stand on the sidelines. We have a duty of care to our patients, communities, and the planet, and a responsibility to act. There is a huge amount to do and we are all needed. There are many important ways to make a difference. This course is a learning journey that will enable you appreciate the urgency of these issues, and the resultant necessity to attend to the inextricable links between human and environmental health in every act of care that you perform or enable. It forms the basis for more specialized topics that we explore in other Sustainability School courses. By the end of this course, we hope that you will be able to: (1) Describe the links between disruptions of the earth’s natural systems and the protection of health (2) Describe the principles of sustainable development for the health sector (3) Identify effective case studies of sustainable practices in clinical care and facilities management We look forward to working with all of you! Let’s get started.