28 May 2025

Judith Singleton

Over the last 10 years I have explored ways to increase pharmacists’ and pharmacy technicians’ engagement with pro-environmental behaviours in the workplace, both in the UK and Australia. However, today I would like to share with you a hospital-wide, multi-disciplinary project because, for me personally, it has been the most professionally rewarding research project of my career. In 2022 I received funding through an internal Queensland University of Technology sustainability grant to conduct research in a small, rural Queensland public hospital. I met with the pharmacist over Zoom and discovered that this hospital only has one pharmacist and so offers minimal clinical pharmacy services. Pharmaceutical waste was minimal, and my project looked dead in the water. However, this small community had already experienced the ravages of a five-year drought followed by bushfires. The hospital staff were acutely aware of the impacts of climate change, and many were keen to engage with sustainability initiatives. So, on the urging of the pharmacist I drove for two and a half hours to their hospital from Brisbane and met the pharmacist and the rest of the hospital’s sustainability team. This multi-disciplinary team comprised the pharmacist, doctors (including the Medical Superintendent) and nurses working in different areas. They were very keen to participate in a hospital-wide sustainability project looking at waste. With my research team I scoped the waste streams and determined those where it was logistically possible to reduce, reuse, or recycle waste. My research team and I then worked with the hospital’s sustainability team to co-design a behavioural change intervention using the evidence-based integrated Behaviour Change Wheel (BCW) + Theoretical Domains Framework (TDF) model from Implementation Science. In the first three months of this initiative, we reduced CO₂e by 2t and, importantly, approximately 3,000 plastic bottles and 866 aluminium cans were diverted from landfill. The most valuable lesson I learned from this project was the importance of meeting stakeholders personally and forging meaningful relationships which enabled the research team and the hospital’s green champions to work together cohesively to co-create a robust, fit-for-purpose, recycling intervention. Going forward, my advice to pharmacists is: no matter how small your initiative it WILL make a difference, and not to be disheartened if other clinicians are not interested in sustainability; work with the willing – it’s amazing what a small group can still achieve.  

After graduating with a Bachelor of Pharmacy from the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia, Judith worked in both public and private hospitals and managed community pharmacies in metropolitan and rural Queensland as well as the UK. She also owned two community pharmacies in Queensland. In 2009 Judith commenced working for Medication Services Queensland, Queensland Health, as a Senior Project Officer in New Models of Pharmacy Practice and was a recipient of a Queensland Health award for her research and work in this area. From 2007 to 2014 Judith was a lecturer in the School of Pharmacy, University of Queensland teaching in both undergraduate and postgraduate courses.