No Smoking Campus

[TRAMA1RN]

i am curious how your facilities around the country are enforcing the no smoking policies that have become so popular. i don't smoke, so no smoking is fine with me. i have worked in a level 1 trauma center where security basically said they will not enforce the policy, and the other two hospitals i have worked have basically stated the same. i am just curious as to what other facilities around the country are doing. this is not smoker against non-smoker discussion! so please do not turn this question into that.

[Altra, BSN, RN]

Security staff do approach smokers, remind them of the policy, and ask them to extinguish their cigarettes. However, they are much more vigorous about this with employees than with patients/visitors.

[WildcatFanRN, BSN, RN]

most of the places I've worked with this policy, you see staff members down the street of hospital property smoking and patients/visitors blatently ignoring it. On night shift, they stay as close as they can, esp in the winter months. I don't smoke either but I saw no problem with a designated smoking area. My problem was with security not enforcing the designated area, not the smokers themselves.

[miko014]

I don't think ours do at all. People don't really put much effort into trying to hide what they are doing, either. Mostly they just stand betweenn cars in the parking garage. If people complain that someone is smoking, I think security will ask them to put it out, but then they just give the complainer a phone number to call. I'm a non-smoker, and none of my friends smoke, but it doesn't bother me if other people do it. However, I do have a friend who is very, very allergic to smoke (we're talking anaphylactic reaction), so I can see how people would have a problem with it.

We did get threatened by a pts family - they saw someone smoking in the garage and said that if they saw anyone else smoking out there, they were going to sue us - meaning the nurses taking care of their mom! I was like whatever, go for it.

So the short answer is: they don't.

[ONCRN84]

I don't smoke, but our state law is that you can't smoke within 25 feet of doors or windows of public buildings. We have smoking areas for visitors that are out of the legal range. Employees, however, must go to their car to smoke.

[tiggerdagibit]

Our hospitals recently went non smoking. I've never seen a security guard enforcing it, but then again I'm not usually standing outside for long.

I'm all for promoting a healthier lifestyle, but I think that making the whole hospital property non smoking is going overboard. I've seen nurses standing out in the median of a busy road (so that they're off the property) to smoke. To me, that is more dangerous than standing in the designated smoking room that they used to have. My feeling is.. if you don't want to be around the smoke, stay out of the smoking room! I also don't understand how you can tell someone that they can't smoke in their car, just because it's on hospital property! Just my

[suanna]

How about if the hospitals offered free packs to violators so that they get cancer, COPD, and heart disease and die-problem solved! Smokers are punished enough by thier habit without the hospital contributing. At my hospital security makes threatening remarks to you and a note goes into your personel file. Our insurance costs go up for smokers on or off campus. And we smell bad, feel bad, look bad- but thats not the hospitals fault.

[Katnip, RN]

Our campus has gone tobacco-free. And it's enforced, visitors, patients, and staff. We don't have security, so it's up to staff members to do the enforcing, and everyone is vigilant about it.

[jmgrn65, RN]

It has always been against Hospital policy for employees to smoke on campus, in thier car if parked on campus, grounds for termination.

we just went no smoking for visitors however they still find places to smoke and I don't think it has been enforced but I couldn't say for sure. They did say they wanted employee to say something to visitors when they saw them smoking well that went over like a lead balloon. so i really don't know what the soloution is for enforcment.

[Tweety, BSN, RN]

Here it's basically the same when it comes to patients and visitors they step outside and smoke right in front of the "For the health of everyone No Smoking Anytime Anyplace" and throw their butts on the ground because of course there's no ashtrays.

They do however, enforce it on employees.

[Zee_RN, BSN, RN]

My hospital has gone "smoke-free" this year--no smoking allowed on hospital property, employees or visitors. It is enforced as able...you can't catch everyone. You can't rip a cigarette out of a visitor's mouth, either, so if they flip you off and continue smoking, I don't know what security does.

If an employee wants to leave to smoke, the hospital policy is they have to do it on their unpaid lunch break (not their paid morning or afternoon break), off property, and they must punch in and out to leave the hospital property. Normally, no one is required to punch in/out for lunches--unless you leave the hospital grounds.

[KaroSnowQueen, RN]

I no longer work in a facility, but my last job went no smoking totally about two years ago. No one, staff or visitors was allowed to smoke.

The garage was across the street, and kitty corner behind it was a Walmart. Staff would walk over to Walmart to smoke on their lunches.

Then out came an email that people would be written up for going over to Walmart, as they needed to clock out for their lunches to leave the grounds (and they weren't doing that.).

Security was very vigorous about finding the rule breakers and making them stop smoking.

The hospital did offer very low cost nicotine patches to the staff members to help them stop smoking.