Embedding Sustainability in Healthcare: A Clinician’s Perspective

Dr. Joelle Dennie, Specialist Obstetrics and Gynaecology, South Island
Climate change is increasingly recognized as a health care issue, impacting everything from patient outcomes to system resilience. Join Dr. Joelle Dennie for a clinically focused presentation as she shares why planetary health is important in healthcare, providing examples of sustainable changes Dr. Dennie and her colleagues have made at VGH aimed at reducing waste in surgical care while maintaining high standards of safety and quality. Dr. Dennie will also introduce work that is currently underway as part of the Green Team OR program.

Waste streams in Clinical Settings

Cassy Melvin, Utilization and Resource Coordinator
Improper waste sorting in healthcare isn’t just an environmental issue, it’s a costly one. Biomedical waste disposal costs up to 10 times more than landfill waste, yet audits across seven acute sites revealed that contamination in biomedical waste streams, with many containing items that did not belong.

This presentation shares how Island Health responded with targeted in-service education, starting at the unit level and scaling up to a system-wide initiative to provide staff with practical knowledge based on national standards to reduce waste errors and promote more sustainable healthcare practices.

Introducing Island Health Green Teams
Spencer Graham, Sustainability Coordinator
Dominique Duquette, RN CHPCN, Palliative Response Team, Victoria Hospice

Learn from the Hospice Green Team as they share their experience driving both grassroots and strategic change, reducing their environmental impact through small, sustainable actions like introducing reusable cups, improving waste streams, and promoting eco-friendly commuting and how they have worked together with leadership to make climate and planetary health a priority at Victoria Hospice.

Breakout discussion

As part of facilitated breakout sessions participants will explore how to translate today’s insights into meaningful action by identifying practical, clinical steps to support climate-conscious care in their own areas of practice.