How to get involved
We want you to think about how you can deliver and influence sustainable practice to your work.
By understanding the key issues shared by the WFOT and RCOT, you can start thinking about ways to reduce carbon both at work and home. Occupational therapists should also embrace opportunities to champion, educate and influence others about the benefits of sustainable practice to occupational wellbeing in their field of work.
One of the first places to start is on a personal level. It’s important to review the references and training linked below and raise awareness of sustainable issues. We recommend joining the Centre for Sustainable Healthcare’s Occupational Therapy Susnet, a special network for occupational therapy practitioners, students and educators interested in exploring sustainable practice and looking for resources.
By calculating your carbon footprint via the WWF website or on ecomedics, you’ll be able to see what you can do to reduce your footprint. This could include walking/cycling, recycling, reducing waste and reusing items rather than throwing away.
Take some time to look at the professional standards we’ve produced on sustainablity and see how your practice is doing. Look into SusQI projects and tools, review resources and raise awareness.
Finally, meet with others to share case studies, problems and learning. We believe it is important to become an active citizen who understands the link between occupational wellbeing and sustainability.
On a professional level, occupational therapists can choose sustainable quality improvement projects. They include considering equipment lifecycle and procurement decisions, active travel, embedding self-management approaches that reduce need for services and prioritising sustainable models of care.
At an organisational level, we’re encouraging members to be committed to reviewing the RCOT professional standard on sustainability and auditing your service. This can be thinking about how you travel, reducing food waste, procurement, looking into sustainable care and reducing carbon work processes. Proposing new models of quality care with sustainability as core principle must include outcome measures for people that are environmentally sound.
Organisations can take advantage of the resources on offer including the Sustainability in Quality Improvement Framework (SusQI), an approach to improving healthcare in a holistic way, and QUEST, a comprehensive strategy using data to demonstrate the value of occupational therapy.
Making an important pledge via RCOT’s very own Small Change, Big Impact campaign, non-profit European coalition Health Care Without Harm or health professional advocates HealthDeclares, is a great way to cement your commitment to make a change. We suggest working alongside and taking action to implement the global road map to sustainable healthcare outlined by Health Care Without Harm!. Finally, take an interest in politics and review action by your government.
Pete Vesey, an occupational therapist has joined us as our Professional Advisor – Environmental Sustainability. He will work with members and the occupational therapy community to recognise and integrate environmental sustainability in their everyday work and practice.
Read more about Pete and how you can get involved.
Your thoughts on sustainably and how you’re combating the impact of the climate emergency could help reduce health inequalities. You can contact Pete directly at pete.vesey@rcot.co.uk.