VICDOC Summer 2023 - Magazine - Page 20
MY IDEAL HEALTHCARE SYSTEM IS HIGH VALUE
AND LOW CARBON, WITH THE BEST OF MEDICINE,
CARE AND PATIENT OUTCOMES.
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We are reaching a bottleneck in
healthcare, in society, and in civilisation
more broadly. We’re feeling the effects
of overpopulation and overconsumption,
and the paradigm of eternal growth on a
finite planet. We need to consider things
like doughnut economics and how to get
to a more sustainable system. I want us to
flourish; I want us all to succeed. I don't
want a societal system where it all just falls
apart in 50 years because we can't cope.
ACTION IS THE ANTIDOTE TO ANXIETY.
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My concern with sustainability in
healthcare was a gradual dawning.
You might worry about the state of our
civilisation and how it’s careering off to
an unsustainable world that's not going
to end well, but just thinking things like
these isn’t all that helpful; action is the
antidote to anxiety. I can’t change the big
picture items like species mass extinction
or biodiversity loss, climate change, over
consumption, overpopulation. What I can
change is what happens on a day-to-day
basis in my sphere of influence,
and within the healthcare system.
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I LIKE TO THINK ABOUT CHANGE MAKING AT
THE MICRO, MESO AND MACRO LEVELS.
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Micro changes are the little ones we can
all make in our hospital or practice, for
example using less resources, or stopping
unnecessary treatment. Things like
these are effective when they're done by
many people. Taking those individual
actions further into the meso level is
the next logical step. I've led changes
to what an entire department might do
in the intensive care or the operating
theatre. We showed that for anaesthetic
face masks and breathing circuits and
the laryngoscope blades that we use
for patients having anaesthesia, that
having reusable equipment was not only
environmentally equivalent, but financially
beneficial. Gradually, through advocacy
and communication, over time those
incremental, micro level changes can
reach the macro level too.
HEALTHCARE’S CARBON FOOTPRINT IS ABOUT
7% OF AUSTRALIA’S TOTAL FOOTPRINT, AND
ABOUT 60% OF THAT IS FROM CLINICAL CARE.
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This means that all the things we do on a
day-to-day basis in our hospital and clinical
environments matter. Around 30% is
building energy use – heating, ventilation,
and so on. The products and supply chain
pathways and processes we use; they won’t
change unless medicine changes it. That's
where the role of government and the
sustainable development unit comes in.
This new unit could really become involved
in research on healthcare’s carbon footprint,
and in making net zero healthcare and
planetary healthcare real priorities. I've
been involved in that, through research
on LCA (lifecycle assessment, or
environmental footprinting) with LCA
expert Scott McAllister, for some time
now. That's been our lifeblood.
