What Facilitates Green Team Success in Implementing Environmentally Sustainable Initiatives in Health Care

Abstract

Objective: To identify the factors that contribute to the success of environmentally sustainable initiatives in health care. Background: Climate change contributes to severe health consequences for global populations. Despite mandates of nonmaleficence and health promotion, resource intensive health care systems contribute to increasing climate change. Health care professionals have been called to mitigate the environmental impact of the health care system. Nurses are particularly important in this work as they are an integral part of health care systems and are the primary providers of care in hospitals, which are the most resource intensive institutions within health care. Nurses are encouraged to engage in climate action by creating, leading, or participating in green teams to enact environmental sustainability initiatives. Methods: In this study, an integrative review of the literature was performed. The search strategy employed three electronic databases. After inclusion criteria were considered, 13 studies were included in the final sample. Content analysis was used to analyze these studies for patterns, themes, and relationships. Results: Policy, external collaboration, organisation, and staff engagement were four main
themes of facilitative factors that contributed to the success of environmentally sustainable initiatives in health care. Conclusion: Knowledge about the facilitative factors identified and examined in this review could guide nurses to reduce health care’s environmental impact through successful environmentally sustainable initiatives.