Prioritising sustainability across our workstreams
Sustainability clinical fellow for dentistry, Zahra Shehabi, talks about her passion for all things green.
My passion for sustainability in healthcare was ignited by my dismay at the amount of PPE we were throwing away after returning to work from maternity leave at the peak of the pandemic in 2020 (at this stage, I had already made changes to my personal life in order to become more 'green').
I then contacted the Green at Barts Health network and the lead on reusable masks in the North of England, and it all started from there!
Undertaking the clinical fellow role has been great as it has given me protected time to manage and work on sustainability projects. My main aim was to empower our nurses and the younger generation of trainee dentists and dental students to get involved and take ownership of sustainability projects.
Our 'Envirodent' project looked at multiple aspects such as oral disease prevention, merging instrument sets, nitrous oxide gas optimisation and greening up our dental theatres, showing environmental, financial and social benefits.
Our digital dentistry project has also helped reduce the need for patients to come in for consultations, reduced waste and improved patient flow. Involving patients has played an important role and we were able to ascertain from a group of patients that they would take more care of their mouths if they knew about the impacts of dental treatment on the environment.
This multi-faceted project that has engaged a range of colleagues and patients, showing a collaborative approach to sustainability, and from this we applied for and won Health Equality Improvement Partnerships Sustainability Hero Award.
Winning has been really rewarding and has validated all the work we have put in. The award recognised the project’s aims to meet the NHS target of net zero by 2040/5, and sustainability awareness in dentistry, which is typically resource intensive.
The judges felt that this was a truly descriptive, extensive project with multiple outputs that were extremely well summarised. There was a sound evidence base and clear methodology, setting out the journey from collecting data to making improvements.
Everyone in the team was truly delighted to have won this award!
We have a lot of work to do to help the NHS reach the net zero target, but we need to prioritise sustainability in every work stream we undertake.
Engaging with stakeholders is essential but it is not always an easy task to navigate the systems given the size of our Trust. We therefore need the collective support of everyone to ensure that we promote healthy populations and to provide healthcare without harm; both of which are important to heal our planet.