Survey of anesthesia department chairs about the environmental sustainability initiatives of their programs

Background: Anesthesia departments can reduce their environmental impact. Barriers exist to the promotion of individual anesthesiologists' roles in environmentally sustainable practices. We hypothesized that accountability of departmental leadership is associated with reports of practices that can encourage and sustain environmentally favorable practices. Methods: Invitations to complete a six -question survey were sent to academic anesthesia department chairs in the United States and Canada. Questions were presented in random sequence. We assessed the association between the sum of the answers to five questions about department- and hospital -related sustainability activities (e. g., more than one "educational session dedicated to environmental sustainability ... for anesthesiology residents or other trainees?") and the sixth question ("In the past 12 months, did review of the anesthesia department chair or review of your department include" more than one "item related to promotion of environmental sustainability?"). Results: Of the 138 departments receiving invitation and reminder emails, 63 departments (46%) responded to our requests. The median (interquartile range) was 1 (0,3) sustainability activity for "No" items evaluating the department chair or department (N = 43) versus 4 (2, 4.5) activities for "Yes" evaluation of department chair or department (N = 20) (Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney test, P = 0.0021; median regression, P = 0.0002). Results were similar for sensitivity analyses (excluding one question about hospital leadership, excluding the four responding Canadian departments, controlling for time to complete the survey, and controlling for the date of completion of the survey). Conclusions: Anesthesia department chairs and departments with annual performance evaluations that included items related to environmental sustainability reported more activities to promote sustainability. The result suggests that leadership -sponsored initiatives directed toward environmental sustainability are associated with environmental sustainability activities in anesthesia departments.