Context We are fortunate in the North East of England to have the first Faculty of Sustainable Healthcare. The Faculty was the brain child of former FMLM fellow and consultant anaesthetist, Elaine Winkley. The Postgraduate Dean, Professor Kumar, has overall responsibility. The faculty is now in its second year and our aims are to increase awareness of the impact that healthcare has on the environment, educate our DDiT regarding sustainable healthcare, and fostering collaboration amongst like minded individuals. In my role as a leadership fellow, I have been working closely with the faculty, and I wanted to create a green champions network of doctors and dentists in training.

Issue/Challenge The nature of training in the North East, means that doctors and dentists in training (DDiT) are rarely in one trust for longer than 6

months This makes it very difficult to embed themselves within the trust’s existing sustainability teams, and to get involved with their green initiatives.

HEENE’s FoSH aims to make the North East the greenest place to train, and one of the ways we want to achieve this is by establishing and coordinating a network of green champions. Once enrolled as a green champion, you will retain that position through the duration of training, thus harnessing the evident passion of our trainees, enabling effective collaboration and fostering a sense of community.

Assessment of issue and analysis of its causes

In 2021, during the Faculty of Sustainable Healthcare’s (HEENE) launch event, a survey was performed of all delegates. The key themes from the feedback included the desire for networking, sustainability champions, training and green toolkits.

A working group of faculty members and DDiTs was established and a framework for the network was established.

Impact The network is still in its infancy but the anticipated impact of the network will be to highlight, promote and celebrate excellent practice through regular project updates and sharing on the Green Champion’s Hub. Provide champions with suitable promotional material for educational events and campaigns.

The faculty will establish links with existing national and regional networks, along with other trainee networks as they emerge. The faculty will coordinate regional and national data collection on sustainability quality improvement projects and research

Intervention The project of developing the Green Champion Network and the Green Champion’s Hub has required a number of key leadership and management skills. It was the first large project that I had managed and I gained valuable experience in managing multiple teams and aligning expectations. Whilst promoting the network it was important that I portrait my vision for the network and inspired DDiTs in the region to engage with the project and to volunteer to be a champion.

We have developed a framework and a project outline which illustrates the steps and timeframe for the project. We intend to make this widely available, and we look forward to engaging with existing and emerging sustainability networks.

Involvement of stakeholders, such as patients, carers or family members:

The project will hopefully impact positively on patient care but as it was a trainee network, we didn’t engage patients or families in the development of the project. This is something that we will consider in the future

Key Messages There is so much power in collaboration. Real change is achieved when change is implemented at a regional or national level, rather than individuals working in silos.

Starting on your sustainability journey can be daunting, and it can be difficult to know where to start. We have designed a Green Champion Hub, which is a one stop shop for our champion with all the resources that they could need to get them started as a green champion.

Lessons learnt Overall, support for the project has been universal. However, at times the pace of progress has been slow, due to reliance on one team completing work prior to another team beginning theirs. Although I appreciated the importance of maintaining momentum, and encouraging teams to complete work in a timely fashion, I learnt to appreciate that ambitious projects take time to deliver and the emphasis should be on ensuring that the end product aligns with the initial vision of the project rather than completing it for a self imposed deadline.

An important lesson that I learnt, was the importance of delegating tasks, and having more of birds eye view of the project. Initially, I wanted to be involved in every aspect but I quickly found that this was unsustainable and I had to trust members of the team to carry out their function.

Measurement of improvement We are still in the recruitment phase of the project and one metric of success will be the continuing growth of the network and collaboration with other networks. Output in terms of completion of regional and national projects will also be important parameters to consider.

Strategy for improvement We have educational events every 6months with a Q&A session. This allows the champions to raise concerns, offer feedback or suggest areas for improvement for the network. In addition we have a Annual Champions Networking event at the Faculty annual conference. This offers the opportunity for the champions to come together to celebrate successes and to help shape the future of the network.

The network steering group meets monthly to monitor progress with projects and initiatives.