This week, Dr Eleanor Nash, Clinical Lecturer at the UCL Medical School, tells us about her work exploring the links between health and sustainability, embedding sustainability into the medical curriculum, and some top tips to combat climate anxiety.
What is your role and what does it involve?
I am a Clinical Lecturer at the Medical School. My current main role is the Planetary Health and Sustainability Lead - embedding Planetary Health and Sustainable Healthcare into the medical school and undergraduate medical curriculum.
Planetary Health is a relatively new concept that not many people, even within the healthcare profession, have heard of. Human health and the health of our planet are interlinked. The environment impacts our health: for example, the health impacts from air pollution, heatwaves and flooding. Within healthcare, the actions we take in healthcare damage the environment, from the amount of plastic waste produced to carbon emissions. Over 5% of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions are from healthcare. In the UK alone, 1% of all carbon dioxide emissions are from the drugs that we prescribe. We have a responsibility as doctors to ensure that the healthcare we deliver today does not damage the health of tomorrow. Within the medical school, we need to train tomorrow’s doctors to be able to deliver healthcare sustainably, including the impact of the changing climate on our health and healthcare systems.
As the Planetary Health lead, I am creating new content on the topic, by working with colleagues delivering existing modules within the medical school, to bring Planetary Health into more of the current taught curriculum, and the assessment process. Planetary Health does not have universal positive support from everyone, and an important part of my role is to ensure Faculty have the appropriate training to understand the importance of the topic.
I am working with other faculties and departments across UCL, to share resources and expertise on sustainable education. Many aspects of introducing sustainability into the curriculum are not unique to the medical school and by working collaboratively with colleagues across UCL we can support each other to problem solve challenges, In addition, it is hoped that we will be able to create cross-departmental sustainability projects for our students
Alongside my Clinical Lecturer role, I work as a GP, with a special interest in Paediatrics. I am involved in postgraduate medical education, and am a Training Programme Director, overseeing the training and support of resident (junior) doctors training to become General Practitioner. I am part of the Royal College of General Practitioners curriculum team, and train GPs and consultants to supervise resident doctors. I find being a GP is a privilege and enjoy balancing my medical education work with my clinical work. All my roles have an overlap of medical education and Sustainable Healthcare. I am also part of the Greener GP network, trying to create a greener primary care
How long have you been at UCL and what was your previous role?
I have been at UCL for 4 1/2 years. During this time, my roles have included being the wellbeing lead for the medical school, organising and leading the Transformation in Medical Education Conference, working with the Postgraduate Medical education team teaching on their Masters on Health Professions Education, and a secondment with the Centre of International Medical Education Collaboration (CIMEC) team. I have also been the co-lead for the EDI committee on Disability Health and Wellbeing. All my roles in medical education centre around my passion for wellbeing of healthcare professionals, developing and training others, from medical students to colleagues, and bringing the impact of climate change into healthcare education.
What working achievement or initiative are you most proud of?
Watching my interest in Planetary Health develop alongside my medical education career over the years to my current role within the medical school has been unexpected, very rewarding and created opportunities I would never have anticipated. I was always interested in environmental issues; my role with the Royal College of GPs enabled me to be involved in embedding Planetary Health into the postgraduate curriculum for doctors training to be GPs. Whilst with CIMEC, I had the opportunity to do a meta-ethnography on experiences on integrating Planetary Health within undergraduate medical school curricula internationally, which has recently been published. This led to my current role within the Medical School, and the opportunity to be part of the Medical School Council committee of Education for Sustainable Healthcare, shaping the curriculum nationally in this field for medical schools within the UK and working collaboratively with colleagues in similar roles across the UK. Similarly, being the Medical School’s representative for the European Network for Climate Health Education (ENCHE) committee, has created the opportunity for collaborative working with colleagues across Europe in similar roles to mine. For this committee, I am part of the Faculty Development team, which includes liaising with the WHO Alliance for Lifelong Learning in Healthcare, and the lead for creating new educational content on Planetary Health and Sustainable Healthcare for healthcare professional undergraduate courses across Europe.
I enjoy supporting and developing colleagues and have utilised this existing expertise into my Planetary Health work, as I am collaborating with colleagues in other UK medical schools to create Faculty Development courses on Planetary Health. The aim of this is to upskill faculty teaching healthcare professionals. Developing a new course that can be delivered in different formats for multiple healthcare professionals across the country is an exciting opportunity,
A sub-topic I created within Planetary Health developed from a teaching session for the medical students on how being stressed can lead to climate unfriendly decisions and stressed or burnout healthcare professionals may make less sustainably friendly decisions when managing patients. From this one-off teaching session, I have since been asked to adapt it for other courses at UCL and for other medical schools within the UK and ENCHE network.
As my Planetary Health role within the Medical School and nationally continues to evolve, I hope the lasting impacting will be an increasing recognition of the importance of Planetary Health and sustainable health care within the healthcare profession.
Tell us about a project you are working on now which is top of your to-do list
UCL Medical School is launching a new curriculum in the next academic year. As part of this, there will be a new Planetary Health and Sustainability module that will be both a horizontal and vertical module throughout the undergraduate training (taught with interlinking topics throughout each academic year and built upon each academic year).
As the Planetary Health lead, my responsibility is to design the content and resources for the new module, for both the students and the educators delivering the course, and create novel ways to assess sustainable healthcare such as games and sustainability projects.
Climate anxiety has been shown to become prevalent in students being educated on Planetary Health and the climate crisis. Therefore, in developing this new module, part of the teaching will have to support the wellbeing of our students to try to mitigate climate anxiety. One way shown to successfully do this is through sustainability projects, giving students positive actions they can take to make changes. This ties in with UCL’s new Sustainability Plan and its "Be the Ripple" campaign , to demonstrate how every little action we can take can make a difference to the climate crisis.
Complementing this, I continually strive to get sustainable healthcare woven into all’aspects of curriculum. My aim (well, maybe my overly optimistic dream) is to have planetary health and sustainable healthcare in every module and as many as teaching sessions and lecturers as possible, as it impacts every aspect of healthcare. To do this, I am helping faculty and other educators create resources or signpost material that is relevant to their topic and content, to encourage them to discuss the topics. To aid my work in this, I am providing training for faculty to help them upskill their knowledge and understanding on Planetary Health.
Hopefully, through the development of the new module, continued collaborative working with colleagues delivering teaching throughout the medical school and upskilling the faculty, we will successfully create future medical professionals that will work towards delivering sustainable healthcare, improving the health of their patients and the environment.
What is your favourite album, film and novel?
Album: Just now, musicals - currently cycling through Sister Act, and Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat
Film: Stardust
Book: Pride and Prejudice
What is your favourite joke (pre-watershed)?
From Friends (how do you choose just one’!)
Joey: It’s all London, baby! Here we go.
Chandler: You got your passport?
Joey: Yeah, in my third drawer in my dresser. You don’t want to lose that...
Who would be your dream dinner guests?
My extended family - it would be impressive and lovely to get us all’in one place!
What advice would you give your younger self?
Probably to be more confident in my abilities.
What would it surprise people to know about you?
I love the sea. Put me in front of the sea, and I will lose hours sitting staring at it or walking along the shoreline.
What is your favourite place?
Swaledale in the Yorkshire Dales.
- University College London, Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT (0) 20 7679 2000
