Congratulations are in order on the School’s Clinical Skills and Simulation Lab achieving a Bronze LEAF Award for its commitment to becoming more environmentally sustainable. And what’s more, it was a student’s RS3 project that helped secure the award.
The Laboratory Efficiency Assessment Framework (LEAF) is a green initiative to help improve the sustainability and efficiency of laboratories, technical workspaces, workshops and other workspaces.
Bronze, Silver and Gold awards are available as part of the framework, which helps increase efficiency across 10 areas - waste, people, purchasing, equipment, IT, sample and chemicals management, research quality, teaching, ventilation and water.
Dr Iain Young, Vice Dean - Student Experience and Risk explains,
The framework looks at incorporation of sustainability information in staff induction and training, how the lab handles waste, manages energy use and ensures equipment is maintained.
"It also looks at initiatives that the lab promotes such as discussion of sustainability topics in staff meetings, team members attending groups and committees that focus on sustainability.
We were also able to highlight the team members that have put themselves forward to lead on sustainability issues relating to clinical skills training, such as promotion of the gloves off campaign and looking at the use of clinical consumables.”
Student Doctor Shane O'Donnell, now in Year 4, contributed to the lab’s success by working on the application as part of his RS3 project last year,
“I am grateful to Dr Iain Young for giving me the opportunity and for his guidance and support throughout the process. My role focused on conducting two audits of the clinical skills lab - one for the Bronze award and one for the Silver award.
For the Bronze award, I ensured the lab met the required standards to achieve accreditation. For Silver, I provided recommendations to improve its sustainability and overall effectiveness, ensuring the lab could continue to deliver high-quality training while reducing its environmental footprint.”
Helen Box, Director of Clinical Skills, Simulation & OSCE, says,
"The Clinical Skills team are extremely proud of achieving a bronze award from LEAF. The work that was initiated by Shane and supported by Cathy Carr, Deputy Director of Clinical Skills & Simulation.
Cathy, Kelly Leatherbarrow and Emma McCabe have been leading the team to expand the number of new initiatives underway which focus on both good clinical practice and sustainable approaches."
The whole team is looking forward to the challenge of achieving Silver status and with this in mind a new special interest group has been created focusing on sustainability within clinical skills and simulation.
Dean of the School of Medicine Professor Hazel Scott offers her congratulations, “I would like to thank the whole Clinical Skills team for their efforts in the award submission and, most importantly, for putting in place sustainable measures and procedures to reduce our carbon footprint. Now we have achieved Bronze we have ambitions on Silver!"
Discover more
- Learn more about the framework and awards available on LEAF Sustainable Labs.
- Read through the University of Liverpool’s Sustainability Strategy 2031 and the projects which support this on the Sustainability web area.