The BMJ Awards 2020: Outstanding contribution to health
BMJ 2020; 370 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.m1613 (Published 23 July 2020) Cite this as: BMJ 2020;370:m1613
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Dear Editor,
As a final year medical student, coming from a generation who are very conscientious of climate change, it is incredible to see that there are organisations in place, such as the SDU, who are aiming for a sustainable NHS. I commend David Pencheon for receiving this award; it is thoroughly well deserved.
As a medical student, I had never been taught on methods to make our NHS more sustainable. In fact, I had never thought about how the NHS impacts climate change which is negatively contributing to the future healthcare system. Ironically, this will be another battle for the healthcare services around the world in this century. It is therefore important for every healthcare professional to receive some education on ways we can try and reduce our net carbon emission. We need to be constantly thinking how we can improve; what can I do individually to help in the hospital while the NHS as an institution tries to slowly become eco-friendly? These ideas need to be taught early on, so that we can make change from them.
Competing interests: No competing interests
Re: The BMJ Awards 2020: Outstanding contribution to health. A reply to Medical student Kiran Khan
Dear Kiran Khan
You are young, enthusiastic, computer savvy. I am in the twilight. But hope that the enthusiasm of your generation will keep the NHS sustained. That you will trump the efforts from across the Atlantic to swallow up the NHS. Our COMMONS have voted down an amendment which would have protected the NHS from foreign control.
A suggestion or two, if I may.
Could you, the medical students and new graduates, please check in your hospitals whether they are equalling or exceeding the recycling being carried out in Australia? Just have a look at the internet.
Could you young folk, good at internet searches and also with access to the pharmacology books of my youth (1950s), see whether some of the old remedies, plant based, could replace costly modern medicines?
I am thinking of Gentian (originally from the Swiss Alps but you can grow it in our England) which was used in my youth.
Then there is Penicillin. Do we really need to use very costly newer antibiotics IF penicillin would do?
Competing interests: No competing interests