Earth Day (Friday 22 April) is an opportunity for everyone to reflect on the action we can take to preserve our planet.

The NHS is committed to reaching carbon net zero by 2045 and staff at our Trust have taken on a range of actions in their professional and personal lives to help reduce our carbon footprint.

Patient travel accounts for five per cent of the NHS’s carbon footprint and running virtual clinics is a small but meaningful way to help us deliver a net zero health service.

Anjum Misbahuddin, Consultant Neurologist and our Clinical Lead for Neurology, took action on this in September 2019 by starting evening telephone clinics for some of her patients’ follow up appointments.

“I decided to start holding virtual clinics because they remove the need for patients to travel to our hospitals and they take place outside of normal working hours so are more convenient for patients,” she said.

“Neurology is a specialty where most new patients absolutely need to be seen in person. But for certain groups, such as many of our epilepsy patients, follow ups involve checking in with them and reviewing their medication, so they can receive the same care over the phone.

“If they don’t need a physical examination, it saves them taking a half day or full day’s annual leave to come and see me.”

Anjum, pictured above, surveyed patients involved in the virtual clinics and the feedback was overwhelmingly positive with 25 of the 26 respondents saying they were happy to continue having either a mixture of virtual and face-to-face appointments or virtual only.

Anjum added: “There are several other benefits to this, for example, my face-to-face clinics are less busy, so I have more time for those who need to be seen in person.”

Using the data from the survey, Anjum worked with Andrew Jackson, our Sustainability and Carbon Manager, to determine the carbon savings from the clinics.

They calculated that 158kg of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) was saved by seeing patients virtually instead of them coming into our hospitals for appointments. That equates to an average 6kg CO2e per patient, which is the same as each of them boiling a kettle 70 times.

As well as the carbon saving, the patients saved more than an hour in travel time on average.

Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, the number of virtual clinics held by our consultants has increased meaning the carbon savings from Anjum’s clinics have been replicated across our Trust.

Anjum is keen to start other environmentally friendly schemes including patient-initiated follow up appointments, in which patients are only seen when they feel they need to be seen, particularly for patients with Parkinson’s Disease.

While she would encourage colleagues to carry out more virtual clinics, Anjum says patient safety has to be the top priority.

“It has to be the doctor’s decision that it is clinically safe to have a telephone appointment,” she said. “For the right patients with certain conditions, virtual appointments are more convenient, more appropriate, and better for the environment.”