Healthcare professionals' perspectives on environmental sustainability

Abstract

The data highlight a disparity between personal and professional actions to address environmental sustainability. Given the constraints Australian healthcare professionals encounter, they are unlikely to shift to environmentally responsible practice without support from institutions and professional associations. Professional development is required to support this endeavour. The poor transference of pro-ecological behaviour from one setting to another is likely to have international implications for healthcare practice.

Environmental responsibility in hospital care: Findings from a qualitative study

“…Despite of this, recent study has reported that nurses seldom expressed pro-environmental attitudes because they were afraid of conflict and stigmatization among their work communities. [12] This supports our findings of the need for strong environmental leadership and culture in hospital organizations.…”

“…Administrators have a key role in leading initiatives because without their contribution hospital staff is less likely to act responsibly. [12,42] In addition to providing resources, it is an administrators' duty to clearly define roles in the organization to help people recognize their responsibilities and to stop them from passing them on to others. Administrators need to perceive sustainability as an inseparable basis of patient care and support people's endeavors with environmental managers leading the way.…”

“…[24] Engaging nursing professionals is particularly crucial, as they have wide opportunities to minimize unnecessary consumption, and physicians, who can avoid unnecessary treatment days. Recent studies have reported that nurses saw pro-environmental behavior as secondary to other job requirements [12,15] and even the term health care professionals' environmental numbness has been used. [10] This has been explained with medical procession, along with which health care professionals have increasingly concentrated on patients' immediate needs rather than preventative scope including protection of environmental health.…”

“…[8,9] In hospital care, environmental responsibility has traditionally been regarded as a secondary issue that falls outside the core mission. [10][11][12][13] However, it has been identified as an essential part of patient care from a health promotion perspective, [1,8,9,11] and the role that healthcare professionals play in tackling environmental issues has been emphasized. [2,9,14] Indeed, environmental responsibility refers to people's behavior, [3,4] but it also includes the actions taken by organizations to protect the world around them.…”

Nursing and the barriers to sustainable health care: a literature review

“…2) There was a strong sense of disconnect between local actions and global consequences with many healthcare professionals demonstrating a moral disengagement to the effects of AGW on developing countries (Grootjans and Newman, 2013). 3) Many physiological barriers to action were identified, including cognitive dissonance, denial, fatalism and bystander effect (Dunphy, 2014). 4) Social identity and social norms revealed a strong correlation between the desire to be socially accepted and the widespread silence on the topic, with fear of being ostracised or entering a politically emotive topic cited as a major barrier to engagement (Polivka, Chaudry, Mac Crawford, 2012).…”