Happy Birthday CSH Courses!

In April 2021 I enrolled in my first CSH course, Greenspace and Health. Although I had been involved with climate outreach and activism for several years I learnt so much from the course materials and had such a great time at the workshop that I signed up for another one the following month, Carbon Footprinting. A few months later I left my clinical role and joined the CSH education team. I’m proud to be part of an organisation with such an important focus and such high educational standards.

This month we celebrate the second anniversary of the CSH online courses. Over 1,200 healthcare staff have been through our training in just two years, and the numbers are increasing fast.  Our goal is to train 3.5% of the NHS's clinical and managerial workforce, or 25,000 people, through our sustainability courses, e-learning modules, and presentations.

CSH online courses are now more accessible than the in-person workshops we ran for many years, requiring neither travel time nor overnight stays away from home. We can even train individuals in other countries and we have now had course participants from five different continents. 

hayley pinto portraitWe use small group activities so that individuals can get to know one another and exchange ideas. As a workshop facilitator, I love meeting such passionate and committed people from a wide variety of backgrounds, ranging from experts by experience to nurses and allied health professionals to professors and commissioners. Like many of our participants, I had “felt like a lonely voice for so many years” but “exchanging ideas and thoughts with likeminded people, listening to all the fantastic work everybody is putting out there” is so inspiring and affirming!

Echoing my own experience, participants love the breadth of information in the self-study materials and linked resources so you can delve deeper into areas of interest, and “really enjoy the engaging videos” which break up the reading and reinforce learning.

course quotes

A large part of my job now is to constantly update the courses to ensure that we are sharing the most up-to-date information and practical examples of sustainable practice, and develop new specialty courses. Two years ago there were four courses, and now we run twelve titles, including a range of foundation courses for specialties from mental health to dentistry to anaesthetics.  

Foundation-Level Courses 

Technical Courses 

I'm always thinking of ways to make the courses more interactive, so we recently introduced quizzes, which are a lot of fun to write. Don't worry, your scores are only visible to you!

Taking an active part in the journey to sustainability, the most important and exciting transformation in the history of humanity is exciting and inspiring for me. I hear this from so many of our participants– that introducing sustainability at work is re-energising, despite the current pressures the NHS is struggling with.  

I have to end with my favourite feedback quote:

“It was ssssssooooooooo good. Really enjoyed the whole session. Thank you so so much. Will encourage others do this course too”.

We want to make our courses available to as many people as possible, so bearing in mind the real world pay-cuts many health care staff have experienced and the squeeze on training budgets we recently took the decision to adjust our prices to offer reduced fees to those on lower incomes and discounts for block bookings.  We wish we could provide the courses for free!

hayleyAuthor

Dr Hayley Pinto, CSH Education and Training Lead