Estimated read time: 5 minutes
Since January 2024, the GMC’s core guidance for all doctors includes a new requirement that ‘you should choose sustainable solutions when you’re able to, provided these don’t compromise care standards’ and that ‘you should consider supporting initiatives to reduce the environmental impact of healthcare’.
Most doctors accept that there is a clear link between climate change and human health. Medical Protection members around the world have experienced worsening air quality, wildfires, flash floods, hurricanes, and other extreme weather events in recent years. All of these can disrupt and delay care to their patients as well as have direct health consequences.
Doctors also recognise that while the healthcare systems we work in play a vital role in saving lives, they also contribute to climate change. Hospitals, clinics, and medical supply chains generate significant greenhouse gas emissions. 1,2 Among other things, anaesthetic gases and inhaler propellants are cited as environmentally damaging.
But does this mean it is right for the GMC to make it a professional duty for you to choose sustainable solutions and support initiatives to reduce the environmental impact of healthcare?
The GMC says it has great support among the profession for including a duty on sustainability, in recognition that reducing the impact of climate change is in the interests of public health.
Some may argue that Good Medical Practice is exactly what it says on the tin – a document that describes a good doctor. There is however an inescapable link between the guidance the GMC creates and the decisions it makes about doctors’ fitness to practise. The GMC has to strike a fine balance between outlining the standard of professional conduct that the public expects from its doctors, and setting out the principles that underpin the decisions the GMC will make about a doctor’s fitness to practise.
Through our experience of representing doctors before the GMC, our first concern is to query what unintended consequences there might be.
We have raised this with the GMC which has confirmed that it does not anticipate an influx of cases of doctors who do not give due consideration to reducing the environmental impact of healthcare. While each case will be judged individually, it seems unlikely that a doctor falling foul of this duty alone would pose any current and ongoing risk to public protection requiring the GMC to investigate further. But members can be assured that they can come to Medical Protection to request advice and assistance if they ever find themselves in this position.
We want you, through your decision to be a Medical Protection member, to be confident you are choosing a sustainable solution and that you are supporting initiatives to reduce environmental impact.
The subscriptions you pay go into a member fund that we can draw on in future when we need to pay legal or claims costs to protect members. We invest this fund in ethical companies creating climate solutions and social change around the world while also providing a good return on investment.
Among other things, we have:
set ourselves a net zero target of 2027, with an aim to actively reduce our environmental impact year on year
invested over £300m in companies that support climate solutions and social initiatives
joined the United Nations’ Principles of Responsible Investment – a global network of companies creating change around environmental, social, and governance issues
More information about our work in this area is available on our website.
References
Smith L. The nexus between climate change and healthcare. The Health Policy Partnership 2022; The nexus between climate change and healthcare - The Health Policy Partnership
Karliner, J., Slotterback, S., Boyd, R., Ashby, B., and Steele, K. Health care’s climate footprint: How the health sector contributes to the global climate crisis and opportunities for action. European Journal of Public Health; 30(5);2020. Health care’s climate footprint: the health sector contribution and opportunities for action | European Journal of Public Health | Oxford Academic (oup.com)