Clinical impacts and solutions Sustainable business and solutions

Sustainable Primary Care

This course was developed in collaboration with the Royal College of General practitioners and the Greener Practice network and is specifically tailored to health and social care staff working in primary care. It helps you understand why sustainability matters, offering an overview of the relationship between health, the health sector and the climate and ecological crises, describing the ways in which the health system itself is both vulnerable to and contributing to the environmental crisis.

We then explore (using real world case studies) how we can deliver primary care sustainably, adapt to climate change and what the wider benefits might be. The course offers tips for how to ‘green’ your practice (using real world case studies), and an opportunity to plan a sustainability improvement project within your area of work.

We also consider the leadership role healthcare staff (at any level) can play in providing healthcare for all within planetary boundaries. As healthcare professionals we cannot stand on the sidelines; we have a duty of care to our patients, communities, and the natural world which is our life support system. There are many important ways to make a difference and this course is a starting point.

Learning Objectives

By the end of the course you will be able to:

Describe the risks the global environmental crisis presents to human health and healthcare systems.
Describe the contribution of the health sector, and primary care in particular, to the global environmental crisis.
Identify carbon hotspots and understand the basic principles of carbon footprinting and sustainability in quality improvement.
Explain how to deliver healthcare sustainably and how this could help to address existing challenges in the healthcare system.
Apply the principles of sustainability to planning a sustainability project in your workplace.