Environmental Stewardship in Anesthesia: An Educational Intervention for Clinicians

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this educational quality improvement (QI) project was to increase awareness of the environmental impact of anesthetic gases among anesthesia providers to support self-driven environmentally sustainable changes to routine practice.Background: Operating rooms are remarkably energy intensive. Among numerous resources utilized for surgery, anesthetic gases are responsible for much of the environmental burden of operating rooms. Environmentally sustainable anesthesia practice is an ongoing important area of interest in the setting of widespread global efforts to address the climate crisis. Methods: Volatile agent-specific labels were affixed to anesthesia workstations at Abrazo West Valley Hospital (AW). Following initial recruitment efforts, a pre-recorded educational presentation on environmental stewardship in anesthesia was made available to anesthesia clinicians at the institution over an 11-day period. After viewing the presentation, participants were asked to complete a retrospective pre-then-post survey on content knowledge. Results: Nineteen surveys were received by the end of the implementation period, yielding a 68% participation rate. Survey data revealed several areas of knowledge inadequacies: impact of climate change on the human health, burden of inhalational anesthetic agents, and green anesthesia strategies. Free-text narratives demonstrated that responders intend to consider more TIVA (52.9%) and/or modify or limit anesthetic gases administration (36.8%) after participation. Conclusions: Key findings across all project aims were statistically significant and suggest value in offering a pre-recorded educational presentation with complementary workstation labels to support environmental stewardship among anesthesiology clinicians.