|
|
|
|
|
You've read the article. Now tell us what you think. Related sites |
Interview by
Curtis Pond It was the sky above her that first awakened Charlotte Brody, RN, to the dangers of medical waste. While working as the director of a Planned Parenthood clinic in 1989, Brody says she was "one of those people who thought the more medical waste we burn, the safer our patients will be." But that’s not the case, says Brody, national co-coordinator for Health Care Without Harm, an advocacy group for environmentally responsible health care based in Falls Church, Va., that she helped found in 1996. "When I learned that everything I incinerated ended up coming back as dioxin in breast milk, the practice of burning became unacceptable to me," she said. Since then, Brody has spent much of her time teaching health providers about the link between the environment and health care. Brody says Health Care Without Harm has rallied 259 organizations and 73 hospitals to help control medical waste. Q: How much waste is caused by health care? A: When we started Health Care Without Harm, the Environmental Protection Agency was saying medical incineration was the No. 1 source of dioxin in the environment and responsible for a large amount of mercury pollution. A lot of hospitals have since phased out incineration and about 100 hospitals have taken the pledge to go mercury free. But hospitals are like big hotels and can be a major contributor to a lot of waste disposal. They’re not great about recycling right and segregating recyclables. Some hospitals only use disposable stuff, such as plates and cups. That generates a lot of waste when it’s not recycled properly. Q: What should nurses know about the environment and health care? A: They need to know how forceful they can be as advocates. A group of L&D nurses in Massachusetts read our brochure on mercury thermometers and realized they had been harming the environment because they used the thermometers. They told the hospital to find a way to fix that. They figured out that the waste handlers also had an interest in the disposal of mercury, so the nurses argued for the waste handlers and the patients and got rid of the mercury thermometers. When nurses organize and take a leadership role, not only do they minimize the threat of waste to the environment, they also protect everyone in the hospital. Places where waste management is working well have nurses who are making it work well. Q: What can nurses do to prevent pollution and waste? A: Take leadership on what is being done to recycle in your hospitals. If you have a good waste-segregating program, then be a champion for it. If it’s broken, fix it—don’t ignore it. Surgery used to be a huge waste of materials. A simple tonsillectomy could fill a small wastebasket with all the stuff that was thrown away. In the past, nurses opened everything they needed for a surgery. If only 2 percent of it was used, then the rest was thrown away. But "just-in-time opening" can fix that problem. Only open what the surgeon wants, and the unused, unopened supplies get restocked. Q: What is the greatest environmental concern facing hospitals today? A: Environmentally preferable purchasing. If you start purchasing the right supplies, you don’t have to worry about hazardous waste disposal. But you have to do it in a way that doesn’t compromise patient care. Q: What is the toughest part about being an advocate? A: Sometimes it’s hard to give a hopeful message when there are so many changes taking place in healthcare funding. Also, we’re taught almost nothing about the environment in nursing school, simple things like the link between asthma and pollution. We have to educate ourselves. |
