Green Gown Awards 2021: Next Generation Learning and Skills - King’s College London - Finalist

Using Quality Improvement to build sustainable value in healthcare

Today’s health professionals are expected not just to provide exemplary individual care, but also to contribute to systematically improving the services within which that care is delivered, using Quality Improvement (QI). In Kings College London (KCL) Year 4 students undertake the QI and Evidence Based Practice module, working in peer group teams (3-6 students) with a supervisor to complete a project in a clinical setting. The module has been running for 5 years training approximately 400 students and 100 supervisors delivering 100 projects per year across the healthcare system of South East of England. The Centre for Sustainable Healthcare (CSH) worked with KCL to integrate sustainability into the module using the sustainable QI framework.

Through integrating sustainability into QI teaching in Medical School Education we address social and environmental challenges in healthcare as a core part of professional practice. A model which is being spread to other medical school settings. The impact of a single QI project can be high but by multiplying that across the whole year group and hopefully into all healthcare education settings we can see start to see real change happening.

Top 3 learnings:

1. Educating doctors of the future to be champions of healthcare sustainability is integral to the Quality Improvement and Evidence Based Practice module at KCL and ensures we meet the GMC outcomes for graduates. There is strong student demand for these skills and students are keen to put them into practice.
2. Education is a powerful tool if it provides learning with practical projects. Medical students not only understood how environment and human health interact but had the opportunity to apply their knowledge and skills to improve the environmental sustainability of health systems.
3. Combining improvement science and sustainability concepts can be applied at every level of the health system and this should and can be done so to help the NHS to meet its Net Zero Carbon emissions targets.