Dr Sabia Dayala (School of Medical Sciences)

Dr Dayala identified the relationship between Quality Improvement and Sustainable Healthcare themes in 2021. Acting on her own initiative, she used a “systems convening” leadership approach to speak to key stakeholders in the field of sustainable healthcare. She utilised these opportunities to understand how sustainable healthcare could be incorporated for undergraduate medical students. Recognising that major programme revisions had occurred in the recent past and therefore would be unlikely to be supported again so soon, she created a strategy that empowered students and supervisors to optionally integrate sustainable healthcare with the Quality and Evidence Personal Excellence Pathway (QEPEP) module that she is leading on in the community.
She used her skills in communication and collaboration to create a “Green QEPEP” toolkit for students and supervisors, seeking feedback from key stakeholder organisations such as the Centre for Sustainable Healthcare (CSH). Under her leadership she achieved an improvement in the integration of sustainable healthcare into student project work leading to a significant increase in the number of “Green QEPEP” offers and uptake. In 2021-22, 4 Green QIPS were offered and all 4 were taken up by students. Since 2022-23 there has been a year-on-year increase. In 2024-25, 118 Green QIPS were offered in total and from this 49 were taken up by students, increasing delivery by over 12-fold.