recently my hospital, the one that wants to be ahead of any other healthwise in the central valley, has instituted, or will institute a policy of no smoking anywhere not even smoking areas provided to families visiting or patient's choosing to smoke. this sounds so progressive and right but in the back of my mind it is not right to force a life style change on someone, even if you in your program offer up nicotine lozengers or patches which our hospital will. true patients can choose to go to another hospital for treatment and they probably will when this takes effect tomorrow. any thoughts? ! i don't smoke or never have for that matter but i do live in a highly air polluted city so i probably consume a pack a day unwillingly.
smoking in bars is illegal in california, however smoking outside the bar is permitted. not at my hospital ! ! does this sound screwy or what?
oh, and staff are not aloud to smoke on the hospital grounds either!
oh yes, i am serious. the environment you live in can influence your healthy living habits. and not having good air quality puts a damper on exercise and exercise, my friend, is the most important contriubuting factor to the prevention of diabetes and obesity. ok, poor nutrition, eating too much, family history of diabetes are known factors yes, but not exercising due to asthma is definitely a contributing factor.
i understand that an environment can influence one's health, but there are ways around that (i.e., the gym). i know plenty of people who live in very congested cities but manage to stay in shape and healthy. i have never read or heard that a congested city is in anyway directly correlated to diabetes or obesity. it comes down to poor health management.
but back to the op's original concern -- i currently work for the county as i am going through nursing school and my department was moved to a different building where they have a strong smoking enforcement policy. you can smoke no where on the premises and have to exit the building (we are on the 16th floor) and walk across the street to public property if you want to smoke. we actually had a long time employee who has been with the department for almost 20 years quit because she refused to slow down or quit. i come from a family of smokers and have witnessed first hand how hard it is to quit, but i have always watched two family members slowly die from lung cancer at fairly young ages.
I am a nursing student who happens to smoke. I've tried everything to quit and am still working on it. I absolutely hate my habit.
I don't smoke on clinical days until I get in my car at the end of the shift out of respect to my patients and because I know it makes a bad impression.
One day I had a break and was contemplating walking up to my car to grab a quick one after patient care, but before post-conference. I walked past the smoking area which was clearly marked NO STAFF VISITORS ONLY. Several staff members were out there smoking. I stopped because two ladies were rather loudly talking (as they sucked down their own smokes) about the smoking staff members and what poor examples they were and how they were just hopeless addicts that couldn't even follow hospital rules. I turned back around (trying not to LMAO at the absurdity of the situation) and went to the cafeteria instead.
Its funny how we can try to 'remove the splinter from another's eye without seeing the beam in our own', but it was a very important lesson in realizing how we are held to higher standards as medical professionals.
All of the hospitals in this valley are smoke-free on the grounds as well as inside. We get some patients who drag out their IV poles and throw a blanket over their hospital gown and stand on the street to get their smokes, but most are willing to try smoking cessation while they are patients. Hopefully, some are able to continue once they're home.
I love it; we get only the rare complaint and the even rarer patient who tries to smoke in the bathroom. They're discovered fairly quickly and most don't try it twice .
It's nice not to have the smell on staff as well as non-smokers smelling like smoke just from walking through the smokers congregating by the hospital doors. Anyway, the smokers wouldn't have any room to stand there, all the available space is taken up by people talking on their cell phones (banned inside the hospital, but not so strictly enforced), LOL .
I have to argue one point just for fun. I think they should have one little area on all hospital grounds, way away from where any non-smokers would be forced to walk through, where the pts families should be permitted to smoke if needed. Sometimes there is no other choice of hospital or not one that would provide as good of care. I feel bad for the pts who are at the hospital 24/7 with a loved one and experiencing one of the most stressful times in their lives, yet cannot have the one little thing that brings them a moment of relief. If the patch and the gum worked equally it seems that there would not be any smokers anymore; therefore, I must assume they do not offer the same relief. I do not think staff should ever be allowed to smoke. The smell is sickening to non-sick people let alone very sick pts.
The hospitals around here went smoke free, but you still see people lighting up outside. I have never seen or heard of the hopsital asking them to put the cigarrette out.
I agree with one of the other posters, they should make tobacco illegal. If the goverment knows that people are dying because of smoking and second hand smoke, what are they waiting for? Just makes you wonder how much the tobacco companies have to do with our goverment?
the hospitals around here went smoke free, but you still see people lighting up outside. i have never seen or heard of the hopsital asking them to put the cigarrette out.
i agree with one of the other posters, they should make tobacco illegal. if the goverment knows that people are dying because of smoking and second hand smoke, what are they waiting for? just makes you wonder how much the tobacco companies have to do with our goverment?
the whole thing seems kinda odd to me!
just my 2 cents
prohibtion to me would be ideal. however, from our past during the 30s it did not pan out so well did it?! my grand-dad was chairman of the national prohibition party 1908--1924 and i'm sure he would not change his mind regarding alcohol if he was looking through my eyes and saw all the under 50 folks bedridden with ascites, anasarca, juandiced and in pain.
going back to the tobacco issue at hand. i couldn't help but recall way back in the 1980s when i was a department manager in a department store and the head manager had us in the lounge going over profits for each department, upcoming sales promotions and such when all of a sudden i had this overwhelming stinging in my eyes and found it really uncomfortable. so i had the gaul to interrupt his lengthy discourse and protest. i said this just isn't right, can we take a vote and we did and only one hand raised outside of my own. i was just plain dumbfounded that no one else felt the way i did. anyway, times have changed for the better. but i still believe if we really had a real mccoy conservative pres we would conserve the environment really well and establish a clean air policy. just look at the sad situation in china these days, why can't we institute a policy that would make our populace healthier and happier. makes sense don't it?!
My hospital (and all of it's properties, we have multiple sites) went smoke-free about a year ago. It's WONDERFUL!!! No more walking through a smoke-filled haze to get in the hospital. No more cigarette butts all over the sidewalks (mostly...some people will still sneak a smoke on hospital grounds).
I'm a non-smoker, and I can't WAIT for PA to finally comply with no smoking in all bars and restaurants too.
prohibition to me would be ideal. however, from our past during the 30s it did not pan out so well did it?!
well, i think there was a far higher percentage of the population who wanted to drink back then (and now) than there are people now who want to smoke.
besides, we could just go to the next logical step and ban smoking everywhere except a private residence while also permitting landlords to ban smoking in their buildings.
i don't really care if people engage in risky behavior like smoking; i just don't want them to be able to expose the rest of us to it.
Specializes in Peds, OB-GYN, CCU, ER, Corrections.
The thought of a non smoking hospital is just too beautiful for me to comprehend!!! Imagine a facility where I could just tell my pregnant patients, pediatric parents, or new mothers, "No smoking allowed." We do what we can to stop them, including making them sign a consent listing the dangers, such as IUGR, SIDS, asthma and the other dangers of second-hand smoke to their children. We refuse wheelchair assistance, hold IV pain meds, but they still consent to all of that for a couple of cigarettes. I'm not a smoker, so I don't understand the addiction. But I will say that I'm sick of hauling chicks back upstairs who passed out in the smoke shack, or half-carrying them back to their beds because they passed out in the hallway. Smoke free, yeah, that's what I'm talking about!!
Our hospital went "smoke free" in January. It doesn't work anyway. Both the visitors and employees still smoke. Have NO idea if the patients are managing to smoke since I work on a locked unit.
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MikeyJ, RN
1,124 Posts
i understand that an environment can influence one's health, but there are ways around that (i.e., the gym). i know plenty of people who live in very congested cities but manage to stay in shape and healthy. i have never read or heard that a congested city is in anyway directly correlated to diabetes or obesity. it comes down to poor health management.
but back to the op's original concern -- i currently work for the county as i am going through nursing school and my department was moved to a different building where they have a strong smoking enforcement policy. you can smoke no where on the premises and have to exit the building (we are on the 16th floor) and walk across the street to public property if you want to smoke. we actually had a long time employee who has been with the department for almost 20 years quit because she refused to slow down or quit. i come from a family of smokers and have witnessed first hand how hard it is to quit, but i have always watched two family members slowly die from lung cancer at fairly young ages.