UAB Synopsis, Vol. 29, No. 06, February 10, 2010
Perioperative Services Thinking Green
“The more I learn about how much energy it takes just to switch on a light, the more committed I am to reducing waste and protecting our environment,” says UAB Highlands Infection Control Practitioner Elisa A. Mejia, RN. Mejia’s interest in bringing environmental health to health care was a seminal step in the development of a Green Team UAB Highlands and The Kirklin Clinic.
A 24-year nursing veteran who joined UAB in 1991, Mejia recently won a journal writing contest with her article, “Starting a Health Care System Green Team,” in the AORN Journal, the official publication of the Association periOperative Registered Nurses (AORN).
Mejia realizes one must be prudent when seeking consensus on institutional changes, “so that we can take methodical, critical, and one-step-at-a-time approaches toward environmental sustainability,” she says. “If all of us work together using the ‘green inches’ method, the cumulative effect often gives us ‘green miles.’ That’s how our Green Team looks at it.”
In her workplace, first at TKC and now at UAB Highlands, a relatively small amount of discarded material was being recycled, with items like cardboard, batteries, and plastics ending up in the waste stream. “On the way to work one day in 2006, I thought about how we recycle at home, so why not recycle at work? That led to a meeting with my supervisor and eventually to meetings with administration,” she says.
To support her inquiry, Mejia researched environmental health in the industry and developed a Power Point presentation dealing with issues such as medication disposal and recycling — “areas we could begin to address at our facility,” she says.
TKC Clinical Services Director Donna L. England secured continuing education credit for the presentation, which was shown to nurses, pharmacists, environmental services staff, and administration. A minigrant from the Web site Health Care Without Harm funded an on-site workshop on the topic in early 2007; a second took place on February 6.
Mejia's article in the July 2009 AORN Journal examines how nurses can play key roles in identifying areas of waste and presenting ideas about recovering secondary materials. For example, she wrote, “Although infection prevention measures encourage one-time use of some products, nurses can investigate how to reprocess these items so they can be reused. A health care Green Team can help a hospital or clinic’s quest for knowledge and awareness of its effect on the waste stream and environment.”
UAB Highlands Materials Management Director Vernon Lee and Value Analysis Director Joan D. Stelling were leaders in raising the institution’s awareness of what could be done. They helped inaugurate a purchasing program that gives preference to vendors that recycle and eliminates unnecessary packaging.
Stelling introduced a reusable sharps container that saves waste that would otherwise have gone into Alabama landfills. “We’ve been told that the reduction in the waste stream at UAB Highlands is projected at 2.7 tons of plastic and 0.2 tons of cardboard material a year, and that UAB Hospital is projected to reduce its annual waste stream by 104 tons of plastic and 6.3 tons of cardboard,” Mejia says. The team also plans to evaluate corn- and sugar-based biodegradable supplies for the hospital cafeteria. Another goal is to recycle operating rooms’ blue-wrap material.
Mejia’s involvement in health care environmentalism grew out of a more general concern about the environment. She is active in the Black Warrior Riverkeeper organization and the Birmingham Audubon Society.
Mejia’s nursing career includes team leader experience in the operating room, with an ENT-Airway focus. She also served as a clinical coordinator for the UAB Collaborative Antiviral Study Group. She earned a BSN degree from Samford University, a BA degree in English from UAB, and is a certified procedural coder-hospital.
Mejia can be contacted at emejia@uab.edu.