Sustainability Award

2022’s Sustainability Award went to Rhea Conn. A senior sister on the critical care ward, Rhea has worked for the Trust since 2009, and has always been based in critical care. However, recently Rhea’s role at the Trust underwent a change – whilst she’s still working on the ward for 30 hours per week, she now spends 7.5 hours dedicated to a newly created role as clinical sustainability lead. We caught up with Rhea to find out more about her work.

“The new role is part of a pilot programme and follows on from work I’ve been carrying out on the ward for quite some time. I started out by carbon footprinting a particular piece of equipment and reducing its use across the ward, and carrying out a project in which I ensured all staff in critical care brought in their own bottles to prevent use of polystyrene cups and single use plastics.”

Working as part of a Trust-wide sustainability team, Rhea’s aim in the role is to help bridge the gap between estates and clinical departments; “Historically, sustainability has been quite nonclinical and has sat within estates as a department. However, the data show that around 25 per cent of our overall emissions come from medical equipment and pharmaceuticals, so my aim is to reduce this wherever possible.”

With a goal to be carbon neutral by 2040, trusts across the NHS are considering how to reduce their carbon footprint. SWB is doing well – we’re the first trust to be piloting the scheme behind Rhea’s new role. Rhea has done courses in carbon footprinting for healthcare; sustainability quality improvement; and the RCN course “leading sustainability in health and social care”, so she is well qualified.

Discussing the Star Awards win, Rhea commented: “It’s a massive personal achievement, because I did a lot of the initial work in my own time, some of it during the COVID-19 pandemic. We were hit really hard in critical care.

Rhea Conn, Senior Sister

“Winning the award showed that the Trust believes in my work – this has also been clear through their decision to support me doing the new role for part of my week.“

As well as the personal achievement, Rhea also hopes the win raise the profile of her work, stating “part of my role includes supporting colleagues to carry out their own projects. When you discuss sustainability with colleagues, you realise there are plenty of people who are passionate, but aren’t sure how to proceed.

“I can work with people to help them lead their own projects. For example, recently I was contacted by someone from cath lab after they read about my role in Heartbeat, and we’re working together on a sustainability project to reduce plastic use on the ward.

“If anyone reading this has an idea on sustainability you would like to discuss, please get in touch with me and we can explore further.”

You can contact Rhea on rhea.conn@nhs.net, or @greenicunurse on Twitter.