In October, one of our Professional Advisers, Pete Vesey, was invited to represent us at this year’s British Association of Hand Therapists’ (BAHT) conference. Pete got to rub shoulders with colleagues from the Centre for Sustainable Healthcare and Greener NHS whilst he was there.
Pete leads our approach to sustainability and works across our profession to incorporate best practice into the work of OTs. Explore our sustainability pages and find your next sustainable step.
After attending the BAHT conference, Pete has taken the time to reflect on his experience.
Pete's reflection
The theme for the British Association of Hand Therapists (BAHT) 2023 conference, which took place in October in Bournemouth, was environmental sustainability, where it planned to acknowledge the responsibility that we all have in making our practice, and ourselves, fit for the future – saying, with the event’s title, this is in 'In Our Hands'.
Over the two days, I was able to engage in sustainability-focused conversations with numerous delegates, comprising occupational therapy and physiotherapy hand therapists.
I was there to promote our newly-launched sustainability webpage, share new resources developed by our sustainability project group – including our 10 key areas for action in sustainability – enable networking through the Centre for Sustainable Healthcare’s sustainability networks and signpost to learning opportunities with e-lfh and SusQI.
The key highlights for me included:
- Representing RCOT in valuing the significant contribution that hand therapists and BAHT have and are making to the profile of occupational therapy, demonstrating excellence in training and in advanced practice.
- Encouraging delegates to use our member experience survey to contribute to the future of their RCOT membership.
- Helping delegates see opportunities to play their part in improving the environmental sustainability of healthcare and reduce the negative impact on the planet.
It was also inspiring to see how producers and suppliers of hand-splinting materials are engaging with the NHS net zero carbon targets and making changes in their materials and processes.
Here are some examples based on the circular economy hierarchy:
Reduce
Julie Janeczko from Allard UK shared an example where she supported a hand therapist to demonstrate to their manager that using higher quality materials saves money in the long term. Other financial and environmental benefits to using higher quality materials include reduced waste compared to cheaper materials that need replacing sooner, as well as fewer patient appointments – reducing carbon emissions from clinic sites and travel and saved therapist time.
Reuse and reprocess
Chris Manning, Commercial Director of MedFac, explained how he is working with the University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust’s emergency department to set up a reuse scheme for temporary leg splints. These splints are put on children after a fracture for 24 hours at their local Accident and Emergency department until they undergo surgery at Southampton General.
The idea is to collect the splints from Southampton in batches, clean and repair them if needed and return them to the local hospitals, for example, the Royal Bournemouth.
Better quality materials also enable more successful adjustment and repair of splints, thus prolonging their use.
Renewable
Cre-AID Labs, an innovative company from India, demonstrated that high quality and adaptable splints can be produced using renewable materials that can be composted at the end of life.
Sarah Hadley, Head of the Hand Therapy Department at Poole Hospital, and Stuart Lane, Sustainability Manager, not only opened the conference but were motivated to seek an opportunity to pilot these products within University Hospitals Dorset NHS Foundation Trust.
In addition, X-lite splinting material produced and supplied by MedFac, has achieved the ISO 14855 standard of biodegradability.
Recycle
MedFac offer a recycling service for off-cuts from their thermoplastic materials.
These are currently being recycled into soft traction weights for use in therapy with plans to develop other products.
In addition, Orfit have produced an excellent blog sharing a whole range of ideas for hand therapists to recycle their off-cuts and end of life splints. Visit https://www.orfit.com/blog/recycling-or-repurposing-used-or-scrap-splinting-materials.
Our 10 key actions to bringing sustainability into your practice
–
Our huge thank you to Pete for giving a run down of what he learned at the BAHT Conference. You can get in touch with Pete or ask any sustainability questions by emailing sustainability@rcot.co.uk.