Sustainability in Swedish Healthcare: Balancing Individual and System Responsibility—And Some Practical Examples From Sweden

Sustainability in healthcare is something we cannot look away from as it is critical to the future. However, the complex question of individual versus system responsibility remains debatable. Clinical priorities must focus on patient safety, with sustainability designed to support and never compromise the delivery of care. The need for sustainability needs to be addressed from the highest level of decision making while frontline innovation also plays an important role. This reflective piece provides some examples from Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm, Sweden. Karolinska has a strategy for embedding sustainability into the organisation, including setting environmental targets, accessible infrastructure, staff education and regularly measuring progress. In Sweden there are good examples of initiatives from clinicians themselves becoming the gold standard. Sustainable healthcare is most effective when it is supported by systems that enable health care workers to act responsibly and provide opportunities to be innovative, without adding cognitive burden.