Cardiac imaging, pharmaceutical prescribing and in-hospital care including cardiac surgery have significant environmental impacts, including CO2e emissions which contribute to climate-related threats to human health. Importantly, many opportunities to effectively reduce environmental impacts exist within cardiac care, and can provide economic, health and social cobenefits.
Clinical activity accounts for 70–80% of the carbon footprint of healthcare. A critical component of reducing emissions is shifting clinical behaviour towards reducing, avoiding, or replacing carbon-intensive healthcare. The objective of this systematic review was to find, map and assess behaviour change interventions that have [...]
The stewardship of networks, strategic target selection, adoption of communications best practices, and development of compassionate team environments can help the health community learn to treat the climate crisis together. A coordinated approach has the potential to shift practice, finance, and power to transform the [...]
Pharmaceutical waste is an important and growing environmental concern. Many drugs have been detected in significant concentrations in waterways, and they are likely to be particularly harmful when "constantly introduced to aquatic ecosystems," such as drugs inappropriately discarded on a daily basis. Environmental contamination with [...]
Health care has significant environmental impact. We performed a scoping review to map what is known about the environmental impact of health care for musculoskeletal conditions.
We must guide civilisation safely through the bottleneck of climate change and species mass extinction, driven by the twin challenges of over-consumption and over-population. Yet guiding this sustainability journey requires enlightenment about our individual and communal carbon footprints from health care. As an outsider to [...]
A radical and immediate engagement of all healthcare staff, particularly those who work in the ICU is necessary to join the race to zero carbon emissions. The following aspects will be crucial: prevention of chronic and acute (e.g. Pandemic) diseases to decrease the need for [...]
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has dramatically increased disposable personal protective equipment (PPE) use, contributing to increased medical waste and other environmental concerns. Barrier gowns are the second-most used PPE item. Although reusable gowns offer superior barrier performance with lower environmental impacts, 80% of [...]
Providing anaesthesia for approximately 310 million surgical procedures worldwide every year, and contributing to peri-operative medicine, critical care, and pain management, generates emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and vast amounts of waste. In this paper, we suggest ways that anaesthesia teams can mitigate their environmental [...]
Human health is intrinsically linked with planetary health. But planetary resources are currently being degraded and this poses an existential threat to human health and the sustainability of our healthcare systems. The aims of this study were to (1) describe an approach to integrate environmental [...]