Rethinking: Sustainability as Patient Experience

In this final article in the series, we explore how and why practices should consider sustainability as a core part of the patient and staff experience – even when it can’t be seen

Sustainability in your practice isn’t just about meeting targets or reducing energy costs – it’s about recognising the connection between operations and experience. Patients, staff and visitors feel the impact of sustainability every day: in the comfort of waiting rooms, the reliability of clinical equipment and the quality of the environments where care is delivered.

That experience can be shaped in three keyways: comfort, use and opportunity. Comfort might be as fundamental as maintaining a consistent, appropriate temperature in consulting rooms or ensuring reliable access to clean water and sanitation. Use can be influenced by how systems and spaces are designed – for example, making recycling straightforward for staff, or reducing unnecessary waste through clearly organised clinical and admin processes. Opportunity goes further, creating ways to engage both staff and patients, whether through green prescribing initiatives, small-scale planting or biodiversity efforts around the practice, or encouraging active travel where possible. Often, staff and patients can highlight practical insights about how systems really work that no report or dataset will capture. From how heating systems perform during busy clinics to how easy it is to follow waste segregation guidance, these lived experiences provide valuable intelligence.

Why Reframe It?

Looking at sustainability through the lens of touchpoints and lived experience helps turn strategy into something meaningful. In a GP setting, sustainability isn’t experienced as a set of metrics – it’s felt in day-to-day interactions, environments and routines.

By connecting these everyday experiences to environmental decisions, practice managers can identify changes that improve comfort, efficiency and wellbeing for both staff and patients.

This approach also helps bridge the gap between data and reality. It makes sustainability visible in the context of care delivery. And when people can see and feel the difference, they are more likely to engage with it.

What Might This Look Like?

By encouraging involvement and considering both the operational and experiential impact of decisions, sustainability becomes part of the everyday running of the practice – supporting staff wellbeing while enhancing patient experience.

Alongside formal reporting, practices can gather more meaningful insights through staff feedback, patient surveys and informal engagement. These can reveal how sustainability measures are actually working in practice – for example, whether waste systems are easy to follow, or whether changes to ventilation or heating are improving comfort.

Importantly, giving staff a degree of choice and ownership can make a significant difference. This might include involving them in decisions about improving staff areas, introducing greener processes, or small environmental initiatives such as planting spaces or wellbeing-focused outdoor areas where feasible. In this context, sustainability shifts from being a compliance exercise to something that actively supports care, improves environments, and strengthens the experience of everyone who uses the practice.