Climate change has been described by healthcare experts as a “threat multiplier” that has the potential to exacerbate and create problems in patients.
When a patient came into the emergency department with her third asthma attack in one week, Renee Salas MD, a climate expert and emergency physician at Boston-based Massachusetts General Hospital, leaned on her climate expertise for insight. Dr. Salas learned the patient lived in an area with high pollution levels, potentially exacerbating her condition.
She advised other physicians to use the lens of climate to examine patients’ illnesses. Dr. Salas suggested flagging potential signs of climate related illness, such as heat-related conditions, in EHR systems. She also urged medical schools to integrate climate change into their curricula, thereby training the next generation of healthcare professionals to become aware of those signs in patients.
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