Keywords: Sustainable healthcare, Patient participation, Interdisciplinary communication, Practice Management, Medical Education

Setting:

Primary Healthcare contributes to societal health and wellbeing. However, healthcare itself has a responsibility to be sustainable (without compromising One Health by impacting on natural resources and ecosystems) and to perform (quality).
A Sustainability and Planetary Health Working Group (SPHWG) was established in 2020, reporting to the Irish College of GPs.
The national SPHWG develops and disseminates education, research, contributes to community services, membership of external stakeholder committees and organisations, and policy development at national and international levels,

Target group:

National college GP/FM members, practices and their patients
Promoting collaborations with other healthcare stakeholders

Description of the innovative practice or project:

Busy family doctors are already overstretched at work. This project is supported by the Irish College of GPs, raising awareness of options to implement practical sustainable healthcare with their patients, including higher quality prescribing, lifestyle behaviour improvements, social prescribing and quaternary prevention. GPs have access to a menu of resources for integrating greener healthcare into regular clinical practice such as online open access to a digital Glas Toolkit, presentations and publications for dissemination to national GP membership and GP Trainers to support practices working with patients for co-benefits of better health and sustainability.

Evaluation:

This novel national project is evaluated by the national GP/FM College.
Summary of Outputs and Activities 2020-2025 accessible to all members (4,000)
• Improving Quality of Clinical Care
• Education, Research, Publications
• Greener GP Workplaces
• Leadership, Advocacy, Role modelling in primary care
• Multidisciplinary Liaison and Representation

Next Steps:

Ongoing evaluation and strategic development are planned to propose this topic is incorporated into the GP Training Curriculum, supported by the European Definition of General Practice (2023).

Lessons learned:

A small voluntary and geographically diverse group of urban and rural GPs in Ireland collaborated in advocacy for integrating greener healthcare into routine GP/FM under the theme of quality improvement, supported by their national college.