Pre-Hospital Care
The front line of healthcare in the climate crisis
How Is Climate Change Affecting Pre-Hospital Care?
The impacts on prehospital emergency care as a result of climate change will be multifaceted. Increasing numbers of climate related illness, such as heat-related illness, trauma from floods and storms, and vector-borne diseases will add additional pressures onto pre-hospital services.
Extreme weather will also impact response times and safety of those working in these environments by causing infrastructure damage and making working conditions more challenging.
Heat related illness is likely to increase with effects of rising global temperatures, even now in 2024 ambulance services have had to put out public warnings due to hot weather and the consequences it has on system performance.
Mass migration, future pandemics and extreme weather events will all further burden the workload of pre-hospital care.
How is Pre-Hospital Care Affecting Climate Change?
Because of the nature of pre-hospital care, it is often resource intensive. Much of this is unavoidable, or requires large-scale systemic change, but it is worth being aware of key areas that contribute a large part of the environmental impact of pre-hospital care:
- Fuel consumption, although numerous services are now investing in hybrid and electric vehicles.
- Engine idling whilst waiting to offload patients.
- Use of nitrous oxide as an analgesic over other methods with a lower environmental impact
- Single-use plastics and limited abilities to recycle
Pre-Hospital Care in Climate Change Leadership
Pre-hospital clinicians and paramedics are in a unique and powerful position to act as leaders in climate change. They witness the sometimes fatal health impacts of extreme weather events first hand and engage with members of the public from all backgrounds.
Many often worry about the environmental impacts of the profession and may feel guilty about its resource-intense nature. However, the impact of climate change on the specialty far outweighs the impact of the specialty on climate change. Pre-hospital clinicians can more than offset the climate impact of their profession by becoming advocates for more sustainable lifestyles, preventative care and communicating their experiences to accelerate climate action.
Climate Outreach carried out research on the perspectives of paramedics on climate change shortly after the 2022 heatwaves. You can read the report below:
Highest Impact Actions for Pre-Hospital Clinicians
Embed climate change and healthcare sustainability in education and governance sessions
Look to audit and monitor climate-change related callouts to demonstrate the specific UK health implications of climate change
Reduce the amount of nitrous oxide (Entonox) used and shift to alternatives such as penthrox. See the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) guidance on this below:
For More Information
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