This publication is part of the ESCH-R project ‘Evidence-based Strategies to create Circular Hospitals: Applying the 10-Rs framework to healthcare’ (NWA.1518.22.054).

Published in: Onderwijs en Gezondheid (O&G)
Authors: Judith Huis in ‘t Veld, Maartje Vletter, Kim Verhaegh & Ellen Bakker.

Introduction

Healthcare professionals play a crucial role in making healthcare more sustainable, both by reducing the impact of climate change (mitigation) and by adapting to its consequences (adaptation). Healthcare education is essential to make future professionals aware of the challenges ahead and to provide them with practical perspectives for working sustainably, including circular practices. Currently, planetary health still receives limited attention in healthcare education. By sharing insights and tips from best practices, we aim to provide educational institutions with tools to integrate these themes into their curricula.

Background

The world is facing urgent environmental problems such as climate change, environmental pollution, and biodiversity loss. These ecological challenges simultaneously pose serious threats to public health (Campbell-Lendrum et al., 2023). Paradoxically, the healthcare sector itself contributes to these crises, among other things through high greenhouse gas emissions, pharmaceutical residues entering the environment, and the production of medical waste (Rodríguez-Jiménez et al., 2023). This highlights the urgent need to make healthcare more sustainable.

To stimulate this transition, Milieu Platform Zorg (MPZ) launched the initiative “Green Deal Sustainable Healthcare Netherlands – Towards Sustainable Care” in 2015. As of 2025, a third version of the Green Deal Duurzame Zorg is in force, focusing on five key pillars, including health promotion, knowledge, and awareness (Green Deal Sustainable Healthcare, 2022). It is essential that healthcare professionals understand the importance of sustainable (circular) practices in healthcare and the relationship between human activity, climate change, environmental pollution, and public health – summarized in the concept of planetary health (Mattijsen et al., 2023).

Healthcare professionals – such as physicians and nurses – play a key role in making healthcare more sustainable. They are closely involved in patient care processes and are often the first to observe the effects of climate change on health. They can contribute to mitigation, for example by working circularly, and to adaptation, by preparing patients for the health impacts of climate change. Although nursing students and educators recognize the importance of sustainability, they currently feel insufficiently prepared (Gutter et al.). There is a lack of competencies, as well as structural barriers such as limited time and funding, making it difficult to implement sustainable healthcare practices. To adequately equip future nurses to work sustainably and take leadership in sustainable (circular) care and planetary health, it is crucial to embed these themes within education.

Despite growing attention, only a limited number of good examples exist within healthcare education that truly integrate sustainable (circular) practices and planetary health. Although initiatives are emerging within university-level healthcare programs, broader integration – especially at vocational (mbo) and applied sciences (hbo) levels – still lags behind. To ensure that future healthcare professionals are aware of the challenges ahead and have actionable perspectives, it is essential to anchor these themes across all levels of education.

The aim of this study is to learn from best practices how educational institutions can integrate sustainable (circular) practices and planetary health into curricula, thereby guiding future curriculum development. Based on these examples, we formulate key lessons learned that can help structurally embed these topics within healthcare education.

Read the whole publication here (in Dutch).

Source: Onderwijs & Gezondheid