Centre for Sustainable Healthcare pilots
The work started in earnest in 2021 when the not-for-profit organisation Centre for Sustainable Healthcare (CSH) reached out to the Faculty to invite them to join a training pilot. Ten members of staff undertook the ‘Teaching sustainable quality improvement’ course at the Centre, from which they used the educator pack to incorporate a 3-hour workshop into seven of the Faculty’s programmes and modules at both undergraduate and postgraduate level.
“The teaching at the Centre for Sustainable Healthcare covers a range of sustainability issues,” says Melanie. “But the over-riding principle is that it’s impossible to have healthy people if you have an unhealthy planet. If we don’t consider sustainability in our work then we could actually worsen people’s health through our impact on the environment and society.”
The workshops use the triple bottom line as a framework which proposes that any initiative or intervention must consider environmental, social and financial impacts. This approach is taught through a series of practical case studies that aim to empower students to face sustainability challenges rather than feel overwhelmed by them. Alongside this the teaching uses the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to provide a global context.
Taking a sustainability lens to the curricula
By 2022 teaching staff had embedded the workshop in nine programmes and in January 2023 the Centre for Sustainable Healthcare accredited the Faculty with established Beacon status. “We were the first nursing and midwifery faculty to achieve this status,” says Jocelyn. “And I think we are considered pioneers in pushing forward the connection between sustainable healthcare and education.”
This recognition has enabled them to apply for funding to pay for Academy membership with the CSH to facilitate education updates for existing staff and initial training for another five staff members. Twenty staff have now completed the training, which includes academic staff teaching on modules and professional services staff managing procurement of clinical skills equipment at the Simulation and Interactive Learning (SaIL) Centre. There are now fourteen modules and programmes within the Faculty that have incorporated sustainability teaching.
“Our students are the future workforce for the NHS,” says Jocelyn. “And by teaching them about sustainability within the wider framework of quality provision we are trying to equip them with the information and tools to make decisions about improving sustainability whilst maintaining the same - if not better - levels of safety and effectiveness in their care.”
Sustainability in practice
Alongside embedding sustainability in the curricula, the Faculty has put in place initiatives around sustainable practice in their work environment which promotes the theory and frameworks in action.
One shining example is the Clinical Skills Sustainability Project which is an interdisciplinary project led by Melanie that aims to reduce the carbon footprint of clinical skills education across all the health faculties at King’s by reducing waste by 25 per cent through recycling, reusing and reducing consumption.
“We noticed that there was a lot of single use plastic items being used in clinical skills teaching,” comments Melanie. “So we decided to try to walk the talk by making sure the way we teach in our Simulation and Interactive Learning (SaIL) Centre is also sustainable.”
The project has been funded by One King’s Impact and the team are about to start their evaluation period to find out if the interventions are making a difference. In 2024, three pre-registration students won a Nursing Times Award for Outstanding Contribution to Sustainability for their work on the project pilot, through auditing clinical waste to underpin sustainable action and for starting the conversation about the reuse and recycling of nurse uniforms. The SaIL Centre has also been awarded gold status in the LEAF (Laboratory Efficiency Assessment Framework) for sustainable practice in laboratories.
The Faculty is involved in enhancing sustainable practice in real clinical environments. As part of their postgraduate programmes, students complete a quality improvement project within their own clinical organisation and are supported to address sustainability problems which, in some cases, become the focus of the project. Past examples have included changing the type of asthma inhaler to a more carbon friendly alternative and implementing virtual clinics as a way to reduce travel emissions.
An evaluation is underway to explore the nature and sustainability impact of over 200 projects from the last five cohorts of students, supported by the King’s Education for Sustainability Fund. Two of the advanced clinical practice students were shortlisted for the Nursing Times Sustainability Award for their projects, indicating national recognition for their contributions to sustainable patient care.
Continuing impact
In parallel to this, the Faculty sustainability team are lobbying professional bodies such as the Nursing and Midwifery Council who prescribe the curricula to embed sustainability principles in their codes of professional conduct. Jocelyn and Melanie have spoken to the sustainability leads at the Royal College of Nursing and the Nursing and Midwifery Council and were invited to give a presentation to the National Institute for Health and Care Research, Senior Research Leader Programme in 2024. In 2025 they met with Wes Streeting, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care to talk about the importance of sustainable value in care provision and their sustainability initiatives in professional healthcare programmes.
Student feedback has been positive, both directly in teaching sessions, and also from the National Student Survey and the Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey 2025. The surveys show that nearly 70 per cent of undergraduate and postgraduate students at the Faculty recognise that sustainability content and action is embedded within their programmes.
“We’re very proud of what we’ve achieved,” says Jocelyn. “But our aim now is to keep innovating and coming up with new ways to ensure sustainability remains on the agenda and that we are educating our multi-disciplinary healthcare students to consider it in all elements of patient care provision.”