Perioperative Sustainability Team
Most hospitals do not have a formal sustainability coordinator. However, many clinicians and staff recognize the importance of addressing environmental stewardship in health care. A strong, functional perioperative sustainability team requires engagement across several departments including:
- Anesthesiology
- Surgery
- Perioperative nursing
- Surgical technicians
- Facilities services
- Clinical engineering
- Supply chain (purchasing)
- Infection prevention and control
- Environmental health services/waste disposal management
- Central Sterilization and Supply
- Health care informatics
- Hospital administration
Ideally, the perioperative sustainability team collaborates closely with Clinical Quality Improvement to embed environmental stewardship in standard quality improvement practices and programs, working to apply the following:
- Educate staff, initially and ongoing.
- Identify and prioritize stewardship opportunities. (See Anesthesiology Sustainability Checklist).
- Gather relevant data and assess baseline practices.
- Design and implement solution(s).
- Reassess practices and make iterative improvements.
- Pilot projects locally and prepare for progressive scalability.
- Redesign systems to facilitate best practices and maintain progress.
- Share successes and challenges (e.g., through presentations and publications) to scale up impact beyond the organization.
Menu
