More environmental protection and sustainability in radiology

Accord­ing to data from the Fed­er­al Envi­ron­ment Agency from the begin­ning of Jan­u­ary 2021, the health­care sec­tor accounts for around five per­cent of total raw mate­r­i­al con­sump­tion in Ger­many. What this means in con­crete terms in every­day med­ical prac­tice is shown, for exam­ple, by cal­cu­la­tions of the Cen­ter for Resource Effi­cien­cy on water con­sump­tion in hos­pi­tals: one bed in a Ger­man hos­pi­tal, for exam­ple, con­sumes 300 to 600 liters of water a day. “Envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion is the biggest task fac­ing our soci­ety in the com­ing years. Every­one must make a con­tri­bu­tion to this, includ­ing us physi­cians,” says Dr. med. Ker­stin West­phalen, a mem­ber of the board of the Ger­man Radi­o­log­i­cal Soci­ety (DRG), spokesper­son for the inter­nal Sustainability@DRG Com­mis­sion and chief physi­cian at the Insti­tute for Diag­nos­tic and Inter­ven­tion­al Radi­ol­o­gy at the DRK Clin­ics in Berlin-Köpenick.

Dr. Ker­stin West­phalen also believes that radi­ol­o­gy has a duty to imple­ment more envi­ron­men­tal and cli­mate pro­tec­tion as well as sus­tain­abil­i­ty in every­day clin­i­cal prac­tice. After all, the large med­ical devices used in radi­ol­o­gy to treat patients, such as mag­net­ic res­o­nance tomo­graphs or com­put­er tomo­graphs, con­sume a great deal of ener­gy and pro­duce large amounts of cli­mate-dam­ag­ing CO2.

“There are already some clin­ics that have set them­selves the goal of ‘zero emis­sions’ and have already achieved a lot with just a few changes. Col­leagues with sus­tain­able prac­tice con­cepts can also be found in the out­pa­tient sec­tor. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, how­ev­er, such exam­ples are still iso­lat­ed cases.”

- Ker­stin Westphalen

Sustainability in radiology

In order to turn indi­vid­ual cas­es into a mat­ter of course in the future and to live up to their own sociopo­lit­i­cal respon­si­bil­i­ty, Ker­stin West­phalen and the DRG not only want to make Ger­man radi­ol­o­gists more aware of envi­ron­men­tal and cli­mate pro­tec­tion and inform them about the top­ic, but also pro­mote the even more com­pre­hen­sive con­cept of sus­tain­abil­i­ty. “Sus­tain­abil­i­ty can be divid­ed into three dimen­sions: eco­nom­ic, eco­log­i­cal and social,” explains Ker­stin West­phalen. “The eco­log­i­cal dimen­sion is par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cerned with the issue of ‘resource con­ser­va­tion’. The eco­nom­ic dimen­sion is pri­mar­i­ly aimed at con­tin­u­ous and sta­ble action. The third dimen­sion is ‘social sus­tain­abil­i­ty’.” In radi­ol­o­gy, this includes train­ing mod­els, the trans­fer of knowl­edge between age and pro­fes­sion­al groups, com­mu­ni­ca­tion with patients and, in this con­text, the top­ic of patient-read­able reports or with radi­o­log­i­cal and non-radi­o­log­i­cal col­leagues as well as mem­bers of non-physi­cian health care pro­fes­sions. “It is impor­tant that these dimen­sions are not hier­ar­chies,” empha­sizes Ker­stin West­phalen. “One can only speak of sus­tain­able radi­ol­o­gy if all three dimen­sions are weight­ed equal­ly and one under­stands the close con­nec­tion between them.”

In order to make radi­ol­o­gy in Ger­many sus­tain­able, Ker­stin West­phalen and the DRG are imple­ment­ing con­crete steps: for exam­ple, the inter­nal Sustainability@DRG Com­mis­sion was recent­ly found­ed, and the DRG Board of Direc­tors adopt­ed a “10-Point Plan for More Sustainability@DRG.” This pro­vides, for exam­ple, for inter­nal CO2 com­pen­sa­tion pay­ments for busi­ness trips by car or plane. In addi­tion, the inter­nal dig­i­tal struc­tures test­ed dur­ing the pan­dem­ic are to be used inten­sive­ly in the future. A DRG seal of approval for “sus­tain­able radi­ol­o­gy” is also being dis­cussed in order to rec­og­nize those who achieve sus­tain­able goals or ful­fill cri­te­ria. In addi­tion, the Ger­man Con­gress of Radi­ol­o­gy will focus on sus­tain­abil­i­ty and diver­si­ty next year. Con­gress Pres­i­dent Ker­stin West­phalen com­ments. “Radi­ol­o­gy has always been a very inno­v­a­tive, for­ward-look­ing spe­cial­ty that has tak­en on new tasks and prob­lems, and that’s why we’re also tack­ling this challenge.”