It’s so great to see enthusiasm building and I’m doing my best to respond to queries and suggestions that you have all raised so far. Here’s a quick outline of the projects that are ongoing to meet the demands of our anaesthetic community: -
Pipeline projects
- Slide set - template presentation with accompanying notes pages outlining current evidence base for the background of climate change, sustainable healthcare and how we can be more sustainable in anaesthesia
- Waste flow chart – waste segregation and legislation around disposal is confusing! We’re finalising a waste flow chart for England and Wales (Ireland and Scotland to follow) outlining all waste streams available in theatres and how to appropriately segregate waste
- Association of Anaesthetists Environmental webpages (https://anaesthetists.org/Home/Resources-publications/Environment ) we envisage this as the ‘go-to’ place for anaesthetists to find out more information about sustainable anaesthesia as it’s where our environmental champions pages are housed and will also contain our case studies library. It’s a work in progress so any suggestions for further content and update would be gratefully received. Please email me at envirofellow@anaesthetists.org
- E-learning resources and inclusion in RCoA curricula – many of you have expressed disappointment that we don’t have sustainability elements in our curricula as yet. Fear not, they’re on the way in the 2020 revision of the RCoA curriculum. We’re also working hard on developing content for e-learning resources and will be calling for volunteers in the New Year to author these chapters – keep your eyes peeled in the Bulletin and Anaesthesia news for how to get involved. There will also be a couple of sustainability chapters in the updated RCoA quality improvement recipe book (waste and anaesthetic gases) and future chapters of GPAS documentation will also feature sustainability elements within them.
Spreading the word and continuing to educate our peers around the importance of sustainable anaesthesia is a key element to the work that we’re doing. It’s one of the reasons that we’ve set up the Environmental Champions Network (see separate post). If you think that there are things that we could do better or areas that we should be focussing on and aren’t then please do let me know at envirofellow@anaesthetists.org
Dr Cathy Lawson
Fellow in Environmentally Sustainable Anaesthesia
Association of Anaesthetists and Centre for Sustainable Healthcare
Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals
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