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Creative images from Tom Bailey at the University of Bradford's Health Service Research and Pharmacy practice (HSRPP) 2023 conference.
Please credit use of images if downloaded from source.
Integrated Care Systems (ICS) Pharmacy and Medicines Optimisation Sustainability Checklist
Tracy Lyons and CPhO Fellow 2021-22 Aileen O'Hare have presented a tableau of options for delivery of sustainability within pharmacy green plans. They are hoping teams will re-evaluate the potential of pharmacy services to reduce carbon emissions and hence, promote wider community health and acknowledge the latent power of multi-sector working.
This is also published on the Future NHS Platform. You will need an NHS.net email to register and access this.
Click here to view the ICS Pharmacy Checklist.
Save the Ocean!
What can you do to reduce pharmaceutical impact on the environment? Check out Save the Water!
Did you know our water supplies might contain low level of Carbamazepine & Clarithromycin?
Sharon Pfleger & her colleagues have written a paper outlining this. New data tool launched to help researchers understand the effects human medicines have on Scotland’s environment. Further information can be found HERE.
Watch co-founder of Healthcare Ocean Dr. Hixson explain the link between human healthcare and the ocean.
Pill School
Liquid medications are less sustainable and have more ecological impacts compared to tablets/capsules.
In 2018, charity Pharmacy Research UK and the Evelina London Children’s Hospital undertook a project to teach young patients how to swallow tablets.
Click here for resources regarding KidzMed Project set up at the Great North Children’s Hospital, Newcastle.
Click here to access the KidzMed e-learning programme.
Nia Templeman, pharmacist in University Hospitals Dorset NHST whose team has won the Greener NHS Healthier Futures Action Fund to introduce' Pill School' to their paediatrics service.
Greener Primary Care
Check out SEE Sustainability:
- General Practice Non-clinical Carbon Calculator
- Declaring a Climate Emergency - Free guide
- Carbon Literacy Online training course
Join the Greener Practice network & sign up to their newsletters - HERE
Check out the Cheshire CCG 10-point Green Plan for General Practices and other useful resources published on PCPA website.
Visit the Cornwall PCN Climate Resilience Board to get inspired, email Manda Brookman to sign up to their fortnightly Green rocket newsletter.
Watch Wendy Tyler-Batt, a primary care pharmacist working across multiple GP practices in Gloucestershire ICS, explain how pharmacy professionals can contribute to greener primary care.
CLICK HERE to watch Wendy's presentation for the CPPE pathway on Greener healthcare & sustainability:The role of the pharmacy professional in primary care.
Which medicines (E-numbers & additives) are from animal origin?
Further information can be found on the SPS website and please see UKMI Vegan excipients document 2019.
#NixtheNitrous Project
Check out the Nitrous Oxide Project led by Alifia Chakera.
Alifia Chakera's work on addressing the climate crisis has resulted in a reduction of carbon dioxide emissions equivalent to more than 1,400 flights from Edinburgh to New York. She was featured in the Pharmaceutical Journal Women to Watch 2021.
Check out Alifia and colleague's correspondence to Anaeshesia 2022.
Newly published August 2023: Entonox® System Loss Mitigation and Management Technical Update
Nitrous Oxide Mitigation: Launching the UK and ROI National Audit
Watch Alifia Chakera take us through her pioneering method into investigating leakage of nitrous oxide within NHS Lothian hospital sites.
N2O: How to Guide
Pharmacy Declares Pharmacy, Climate & Health Virtual Conference 2021.
How to recycle insulin pens?
Medications review during heatwaves
Risk management of medicines stored in clinical areas: Temperature Control, Edition 1, June 2015 by NHS Pharmaceutical Quality Assurance Committee 2015
Managing Medicine Stocks in a Heat wave by University Hospitals Dorset NHSFT & medications likely to provoke or increase the severity of heatstroke: CLICK HERE
Click here to read about heat-related illnesses: physiology, symptoms and management.
Managing Pharmacy Waste
Pharmacy has a statutory duty of care. This applies to everyone in the waste management chain from producer to disposer. It requires that the waste be managed and that all reasonable measures are taken to ensure that the waste is dealt with appropriately from the point of production to the point of final disposal. Pharmacies’ responsibilities do not end when they hand their waste to their waste collector.
Read more about Health Technical Memorandum (HTM) 07-01 on best practice for waste management and ways to improve the environment and carbon impacts of managing waste.
Click here for MedsDisposal Campaign materials.
Click here to download Pharma Waste Management poster template.
Low Carbon Inhalers
Suggested flyers around your workplace or anywhere suitable:
Suggested websites:
- How inhalers affect the environment by Asthma + Lung UK and NHS England
- Inhaler carbon footprint by Regional Drugs & Therapeutics Centre Newcastle
- Carbon footprint table from MIMS supports greener inhaler prescribing
- Environmental Position Statement by the Primary Care Respiratory Society (PCRS)
- GreenerInhaler.org: Check out Inhaler Guide HERE
- How to Reduce the Carbon Footprint of Inhaler Prescribing by Greener Practice
- NICE Patient Decision Aid - Inhalers for Asthma
- Example sustainable respiratory prescribing guide from NHS Herefordshire & Worcestershire HERE
- Example low carbon respiratory guides from Tees Valley CCG and County Durham & Tees Valley APC.
- PrescQIPP Inhaler Carbon Footprint - Bulletin 295
We recommend you check out the following videos:
- Medicines Optimisation - Evironmental Impact of Inhalers by Darush Attar-Zadeh
- Green Inhaler Prescribing - Eco Medication Review by Layla Siebert
- Red Whale - Environmental Impact of Inhalers
- Toby Capstick - The Greenest Inhaler is the one patients can use