Peter Dudgeon's activity

In group: Sustainable Healthcare

Image of 'Peter Dudgeon
  • Profile picture of Peter Dudgeon

    Peter Dudgeon posted an update in the group Sustainable Healthcare 4 years, 5 months ago

    Hi Everyone,
    As someone who is keen to progress this agenda, but is not currently running an improvement project in the Health System (but may very well be soon), I just wondered what people’s views are about what it’s appropriate to share in this group. It seems to me that, even when we’re not engaged in a project, we have daily conversations with colleague in Health and Care which can help shape the sustainability agenda, and I wondered if it’s appropriate to use this forum to share resources that might help us speak in an informed way, about why the agenda is so important. Thoughts?

    • Profile picture of Dr Seema Srivastava MBE
      Dr Seema Srivastava MBE replied 4 years, 5 months ago

      Hi Pete. The two Bristol acute hospitals have declared a climate emergency with ambitious aims to become carbon neutral by 2030. We’re in conversations with our Sustainability team who are already working with our clinical teams to embed environmental benefits into QI projects. I think using the SIG would be a great way to share what we are doing and keep us energised (pardon the pun)! Our biggest challenge is measurement of carbon use as well as other forms of energy consumption. I’m trying to encourage a “perfection is the enemy of good” mind-set and think of “good enough” ways to describe the reductions. I would be really interested in how we can influence companies who make products for the NHS to declare their carbon calculations per product. As we heard yesterday in the wider determinants of heath session – “Think Big, Start Small”.

      • Profile picture of Peter Dudgeon
        Peter Dudgeon replied 4 years, 5 months ago

        Hi Seema, that’s great to hear. I too think that keeping the energy going, and supporting each other is crucially important for the vitality of SIGS. Calculating the carbon costs is a really interesting approach for products; I’m definitely of the mindset of perfection is the enemy of progress. I’m a bit new and naive to these approaches, but I floated at yesterday’s sustainability session at the Q community event that – given we can estimate the costs of carbon offsetting (I’m not saying offsetting is the way to solve the climate emergency, by the way), could we actually use the same unit of measure i.e. £s to measure the true cost of a product. In the same way the price of product is the price plus VAT. Could the true price by which we judge our procurement be the price plus VAT, plus price of offsetting. Just a thought – I’m looking forward to learning more on the 11th of March, when we’ll be at the Centre for Sustainable Healthcare (Oxford) for a Q visit. Anyone interested in this, keep an eye out on the Q visits section of the Q website – a booking link should be up in the next couple of weeks.