PHOENIX-Doctors have a duty to encourage the hospitals and clinics they work in to go green because helping create a cleaner environment will improve the health of the very patients they are supposed to be caring for.
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July 2009This was one of the underlying messages from Robin Cotton, MD, Director of Pediatric Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, who gave the Joseph Ogura Lecture to the Triological Society at the Combined Otolarygnology Spring Meeting.
As physicians, we have historically considered ourselves as healers, rather than polluters, and have upheld the Latin maxim of primum non nocere-first, do no harm, he said. While doctors spend time focusing on the healing of patients, they have paid little attention to the fact they and their hospitals contribute to pollution, which in turn adversely affects people’s health.