Transforming Environmental Sustainability in Hospitals: A Toolkit to Facilitate Change

The University of Melbourne Medical School's Sustainable Healthcare Team is made up of senior clinicians and expert academics with extensive experience in sustainable healthcare and transformational change. The Team can provide implementation and research support to assist a health organisation to embed environmentally (and often financially) sustainable outcomes. This is achieved using The University of Melbourne's Hospital Sustainability Toolkit.

Overview

The University of Melbourne Hospital Sustainability Toolkit is made up of four complementary components that provide governance and implementation frameworks for sustainability initiatives to increase staff engagement and build an organisation’s capacity to achieve environmental sustainability outcomes.

Sustainable Healthcare toolkit diagram

The Toolkit incorporates:

  1. A Hospital Sustainability Project Tracker (pre-populated with project suggestions) with reporting abilities for hospital sustainability initiatives.
  2. Sustainability in Quality Improvement (SusQI) training (The University of Melbourne has Beacon Site recognition from the UK Centre for Sustainable Healthcare).
  3. Education materials to integrate climate change and healthcare sustainability into existing clinical curricula.
  4. Hospital Environmental Sustainability Competition support

Introduction of the Toolkit at Royal Melbourne Hospital resulted in:

  • Clear governance structures for staff focused on clinical sustainability initiatives.
  • Successful rollout of the Hospital Environmental Sustainability Competition in 2022 at the Royal Melbourne Hospital and across the Parkville Precinct in 2023 resulting in cumulative carbon savings of 2.6 million kg of CO2e, financial savings of $800,000, 3 tonnes of waste diverted from landfill, and 250,000 single-use items avoided.
  • Adaptation of the Hospital Sustainability Project Tracker into the local SharePoint platform to enable prioritisation, project tracking and reporting.
  • Integration of education resources into the intern curriculum with significant improvements in interns’ understanding of the impact of climate change on health, the environmental impact of healthcare delivery and the health co-benefits of climate action.
  • Positive feedback on access to SusQI competition resources.

What we Offer

Our Sustainable Healthcare Team offers:

  1. Research support

    1. Draft the Toolkit implementation and evaluation protocol and ethics approval
    1. Research associated with evaluation of the Toolkit

  2. Hospital Sustainability Project Tracker implementation assistance

    1. Stakeholder engagement
    1. Support in development of governance structures
    1. Tailoring of the project tracker to an organisation’s specific requirements

  3. Support integrating climate change and healthcare sustainability education material into existing clinical curricula

    1. Engagement with education leads and stakeholders
    1. Support with resource integration
    1. Support evaluating the effectiveness of the educational integration

  4. Sustainability in Quality Improvement (SusQI) support

    1. Engagement with local Safety and Quality teams
    1. SusQI project management tools and resources
    1. Access to University of Melbourne SusQI workshops to upskill staff

  5. Hospital Environmental Sustainability Competition support

    1. Establish competition parameters and pathways
    1. Resources for competition entrants and leads
    1. Ongoing operational support including outcome measurement

Health service requirements:

  • Executive level support
  • Existing sustainability team that preferably includes a Sustainability Manager, an Education and Engagement Lead and a Data and Reporting Lead.
  • Safety and Quality team support
  • Support from inter-professional education leads

Hospital requirements:

  • Executive level support
  • Clinical sustainability lead
  • Existing sustainability team/network of green champions

Contact

Please contact ben.dunne@unimelb.edu.au for more information.