CELEBRATING SUCCESS GREENER PRACTICE 

Almost a quarter of the NHS’ carbon footprint comes from Primary Care. Primary care is multiple

separate small organisations with limited central control which makes creating change harder in this

sector. The decarbonisation strategy “Delivering a zero carbon NHS” offers a somewhat limited focus on addressing primary care, in particular on General Practice Carbon hotspots.

 

The primary care carbon footprint is predominantly from medication including inhalers, therefore it is crucial to develop interventions which will support changes in prescribing behaviour such as guideline production, enabling quality improvement activities and raising awareness about environmental impact.

 

Overprescribing, overdiagnosis and over-investigation are issues in modern healthcare which create

worse outcomes for our patients. There is also evidence that sustainable healthcare can both

optimise health and focus on prevention.

 

General practice is notoriously target driven, working usually over the financial year without much

long term thinking. Changing hearts and minds is a slow process. Greener Practice was formed to

support those working in primary care who wanted to become involved in both reducing the

environmental impact of healthcare and an understanding of the impacts of the climate crisis on the

communities we serve.

Greener Practice is the first primary care network for sustainable healthcare which linked clinicians locally into local and special interest groups. We are the only place collating information, primarily clinical, for a primary care audience which is free and open access. Greener Practice addresses the reality that education and behaviour change in primary care is slow and hard to measure. Many organisations fail to focus their green plans on change in general practice due to the significant challenges specific to primary care. The focus of Greener Practice’s work has been on enabling change rather than on measurement. We feel our strength has been the fluidity of growth as an organisation and enabling people to feel part of a supportive and encouraging group with disseminated leadership.

 

We have also been innovative through developing a variety of approaches to addressing the high carbon footprint of primary care at a time when this has not been addressed significantly by other organisations.

 

Our core mission has been to reduce carbon whilst maintaining high quality care, thus improving safety for patients and staff. We have prioritised working to enable and empower both healthcare professionals and patients to create sustainable action and change.