SWAG - Sustainability Week At Gloucestershire Academy: An innovative programme to raise awareness of sustainability in healthcare for medical students
by Zoe Brown
Poster Download
Background
Outcomes for graduates outlines the importance of sustainability teaching for medical students. But what is medical students’ awareness of sustainable healthcare? How important do they think it is? Are they keen to learn more about it?
Aim
The main aims of this project were to raise medical students’ awareness of sustainability in healthcare, encourage students to take an active role in it, and educate on key aspects of sustainability.
Method
An innovative, exciting new programme was developed for 20 University of Bristol final-year medical students at Gloucestershire Academy, and was undertaken in February 2019. The programme ran for 1 week alongside regular teaching, and was named SWAG (Sustainability Week At Gloucestershire Academy).
A programme was created incorporating several varied activities and challenges for students, including a ‘Guess the Cost’ game and daily email bulletins. Students were encouraged to think of solutions to improve sustainability on the wards, and gave short presentations with prizes for the best suggestions.
Pre and post intervention questionnaires were used to assess students’ attitudes towards sustainability, following thematic analysis of white space answers.
Results
After the intervention students had an improved knowledge of the principles of sustainable healthcare, and enthusiasm for involvement with sustainability and quality improvement in their future careers.
Next steps
We hope to follow up with students at a later date, once they start work as F1s, to see if they have a continued interest in sustainability. This work could be used to develop a programme to be delivered across the University of Bristol’s academies, and further afield.