To be sick of seeing people smoking by no smoking signs by hospital entrances

Because you're stereotyping and generalising. I'm the same age as you, but I don't lump 'boomers' (or any other generation) together as the enemy.

I have also worked full time my whole adult life - never had a break in that time of more than a couple of weeks holiday - but, who knows, tomorrow I might be hit by a bus or develop a debilitating illness or get made redundant and struggle to find another job - I'm not going to judge people who need state support, I might be in their shoes one day.

Quite.

My little lad is on max dose of daily antihistamines plus we have to carry epi-pens, we don't travel by public transport, we don't leave the house unless absolutely necessary and a targeted destination, ie. The shopping centre with a multistorey indoor car park, or places by appointment only.

The only effective medication for my migraines was stopped years ago, but my migraines seemed fewer and far between back then anyway. Then when I was pregnant and highly smell sensitive, I was placed opposite someone at work who was a chain smoker and wore his smoking jacket to work because his wife didn't like it being left in the house! Add in HG. My migraines started getting worse and just never stopped after that.

So we really are heavily restricted on what we do or where we go.

But one of the primary places we can't avoid it are at hospital entrances.

Similarly for ‘benefits bashing’. I’ve worked my entire life, what was it for? When I find myself being assaulted by these people? When they have so many more rights than I have ever had? No one ever supported me.

Aw diddums. I speak as I have found after 50 years of living in the shadow of that generation. Why is it fine for them to take our entire lives, ruin our entire civilization for all that come after them, but ‘ageist’ to call them out on it? Because they’ve been enabled to use power against us. And that’s not good enough.

I hated negotiating ambulances and smokers when visiting our nearest acute hospital over an extended period.

On my last visit there were no smokers visible - the area had been replaced with flower planters, a coffee hut and a large colourful fruit and vegetable stall. It looked and smelled so healthy compared to smoke.

I’m sure the smokers had just moved elsewhere though.

Id be surprised if any hospitals have shelters given you're not meant to smoke on site, on the grounds at all? Most NHS trusts have signed up to this.

Yabu - smoking is addictive. Few people want to be standing outside in all weathers, sometimes when they are seriously ill, having a cigarette. If they could break the addiction, they would.
Hospitsl trusts can't enforce no smoking outside rules because they know full well that it is an addiction - patients are already under greater stress because they are ill and that's not the time to force them to give up smoking.
As for staff, they are paid for their time but the nhs does not own them. If they smoke, that's their own concern and I doubt the nhs can afford to alienate staff by banning it totally from the site.
Personally I don't want my dr or nurse unable to focus at work because they are craving a cigarette

The hospital I work at has dedicated, covered smoking shelters. Everyone still smokes by the no smoking signs at the main entrance. The entrance to the big children's hospital I routinely take my disabled child (who has chronic respiratory problems) to is also full of people smoking. If dedicated smoking shelters and sick kids don't put people off smoking, the signs aren't going to.

Oh and she used to smoke in bed in the hospice. They’d tell her off. “What are you going to do? Expel me?” she’d laugh.

My sister died of a brain tumour. She was a smoker years before but had given it up. She started again when she was dying (in hospice). I wheeled her down to the entrance and bought her cigarettes etc. She would usually be keen for someone to visit and do this for her. I would put my coat over her as she was in her nightie and she’d puff away. She lived on chocolate by that point too (they put you on steroids so the hunger is extreme).
She went from healthy to dead in 7 months. She was really sporty and a vegetarian. She died one day after her 51st birthday.
Stop judging because you don’t know other people’s stories.

There are more recourse options for university students and their visitors - the student could be subjected to disciplinary sanctions - so there is a threat that can be used for enforcement.

No such threat applies to hospital patients and visitors. Much as they might want to, they can't throw a patient out while they are undergoing treatment. In England and Wales it is not illegal to smoke out of doors. Breach of a hospital's outdoor smoking policy would be purely a civil matter, so the police wouldn't be interested, and the cost of pursuing civil litigation that would be on very shaky grounds to begin with would not be worth it.

Most hospitals have security staff, so why aren't they enforcing the no smoking policy?

At my son's Uni, there was a campus-wide no smoking policy which was enforced by the campus security staff very strictly indeed, even in the open air parts of the campus, and the security staff weren't just "policing" the students, the rule applied to visitors too who were likewise "reminded" firmly by security staff not to smoke!

As it should be. Using tax incentives to improve the health of a nation is a great idea. But the fact is, if everyone stopped tomorrow there would be a net black hole in the budget of about £6 billion and nobody has ever wondered how that would be filled.

To where, though, if there is no designated smoking space? This is about managing behaviours - if the entire hospital grounds are 'no smoking' and someone makes the decision to smoke anyway, they might as well smoke illicitly in the door area as ten paces away, because it's equally 'not allowed' and it's more sheltered from the elements.

Put a smoking area/shelter ten paces away and people will use it.

I can't begrudge a terminally sick person having a cigarette. The staff should at least have a designated area so they can't be seen.

I was in hospital for five weeks and the smoking area was where all the 'no smoking signs' were. Like in every hospital I've ever been to basically.

I asked the nurses why they had the signs when everyone smokes there, and they said the signs aren't for patients, only staff!?

I often wondered why you don't see doctors or nurses smoking there. Presumably they have a secret area or they must fully leave the hospital site.

This

Your language here is extremely ageist, with a side-serving of benefits bashing. As for dementia - if a person has dementia they might not even understand 'no smoking' signage.

Presumably it could come out of the £8.5 billion in taxes smokers already pay?

It must be impossible for you to be anywhere in public with all that.

What? Visitors outside the maternity unit are enjoying their final cigarette? I don't think so. Get away from the doors and windows, that's all people are asking.

I don't really care if they're stressed or what's going on, it's still selfish to force others to breathe in smoke just walking in and out of buildings.

Cigarette smoke triggers days if not week long migraines for me. It can rend me completely useless, feeling sick and dizzy with visual disturbances. Makes being a single parent carer extremely difficult.

My son is autistic and non-compliant with many procedures such as dental or opthamological, so we spend an awful lot of time at the hospital where there are more resources and provisions and appointments can be split or extended. He also has MCAS, which can be triggered by cigarette smoke and aerosols.

His entire body flares up in hives and the obsession over scratching lasts days, causes sleepless nights and self injurious behaviours.

When people think about the harm of second hand smoke they probably only think it is a bit of wheezing, a fleeting moment that means it probably won't be doing much harm, that there's more pollution in the air from traffic and industry, what's the harm, but nobody ever thinks about anything else.

Smoke if you want to, by all means, just do it away from the bloody doors.

Smokers? They won’t.

The kind of entitled dementia baby boomer who smokes will simply assume their rights to ruin everyone else’s life with the full backing of the state: ‘person-centred care’ ideology, while needed sometimes, clearly falls down here. Do you not know what these people are like? This is not about polite middle class professionals. Ditto for either the extremely rich successful male who still wants to smoke or the benefits brigade who get everything given to them on a plate and still think they deserve more.

And what @ProsperoBloom said, with bells on.

Are you going to pay more tax so that we can have some more minimum wage security guards at every entrance (they’d need two at each one)?

The hospital I work at is a no smoking zone, but there is always patients (and staff) outside smoking. They do go away from the entrance to the ‘vaping’ huts but unless the hospital hires people to stand around the area all day making sure no one smokes, it won’t stop.

I’ve had to tell more than a few patients to stop vaping on the wards!