To think stopping hospital staff smoking within the grounds

[Sparklingbrook]

will cause no end of problems?

here

On paper it's a good thing but can it actually be done?

I just wish they could all walk through a suction machine or something afterwards so they didn't stink. Nothing I hate worse than one of my colleagues coming in, stinking of smoke and going to a patient. Not nice and not professional.

I used to smoke mind, I have an e-cig now.

There's a ban at our local hospital but it's ignored. Everyone stands right outside the entrance in all weathers smoking. Many are patients in PJs sitting in wheelchairs attached to drips.

I've just finished two months of daily radiotherapy and weekly chemo for cancer and every day I had to walk through a haze a smoke to attend my appointments. People were standing right underneath the No Smoking signs. I don't give a shit if others want to kill themselves but as someone who has never smoked I think behaviour like that makes every last one of them a selfish fucker.

My local hospital banned smoking anywhere on their extensive grounds years ago.

Clearly I understand, but it's pretty crap when you're in a crisis.

I agree with a PP, it's time to ban the sale of tobacco.

Yes, it will cause a major hole in the budget so it needs planning and executing carefully. Yes, there will be a lot of people who are very badly addicted and who will need intensive and humane help to either give up or find a relatively harmless way of consuming nicotine. Yes, there will be a black market but there already is.

The current situation though is deeply immoral. The govt gets billions of pounds from the sale of a highly addictive drug that is likely to kill over half of the people who use it regularly. At the same time, the constant public health messages, rapidly extending smoking bans and punitive taxes encourage a societal attitude that it's absolutely fine to be really horrible to a group of people who disproportionately include the poorest and most vulnerable in the country and around 80% of whom became addicted as children.

That's all for another thread though. One of these days I'll be brave enough to start my own AIBU

Meanwhile, smoking bans in hospital grounds are inhumane and nothing to do with harm reduction.

My Trust has been smoke-free for patients and staff for a couple of years.

I think it's time to look at harm-reduction seriously, and allow vaping etc for smoking staff/patients in staffrooms/patient lounges. The trouble is that some militant anti-smokers seem hellbent on banning these safer alternatives in public places too.

Hmm. Not sure about vaping. It is turning into one of the next big public health concerns according to a conference I went to yesterday.

Which conference was it Tossed? It's worth remembering that:

• there are several very large and powerful interest groups that have a strong vested interest in seeing vaping fail to take off.

• over half of all regular smokers will die as a direct result of their smoking. Vaping would have to be pretty fucking awful to be a bad thing.

A question:- is smoking when on oxygen really dangerous?

I was locking my bike up outside the hospital a couple of weeks ago and there was a bloke with a mask and a cylindrical tank sitting on the seat smoking.

I confess to walking past him pdq with images of explosions in my mind.....

staff smoke on the grounds at my hospital. Not helpful when waiting for a taxi home after being kept in for a week with breathing difficulties

This isn't a new thing. Our trusts have had it in place forover a decade now. I used to and sit on the roof, maintenance used to join me. The roof was a fair few floors up so it didn't cause non smokers issues and a flowering with sand was used for butts. A jobsworth moaned about the risks being on the roof so maintanace made the fence better and wrote a risk assessment for all those accessing it to sign.

This may be considered controversial by some, but I think health care (and food production for that matter) professionals shouldn't smoke at all while they are working. Chemicals cling to hands, mouth, clothes etc for ages. I would just ban smoking altogether if I had the choice.

I don't think that's contoversial at all, wherethewildthingis. I think it's a thoroughly bog-standard, socially acceptable attitude to have a pop at smokers and want to restrict where and when they smoke while at the same time making them feel bad for smelling or having 'chemicals' clinging to them or whatever. In my head I have christened it 'smoker-poking' and it's a national sport.

Personally, I'd rather have a health care professional who could keep their mind on the job because they weren't climbing the walls for their nicotine fix. If that means a smoking break then so be it - I'd rather they were vaping if they can't give up though.

I would just ban smoking altogether if I had the choice.

This I agree with and I think this is controversial and radical. It would be great if all the smoker-pokers would focus their anger and disgust at smoking where it truly belongs - the tobacco companies and the government who make an obscene amount of money off the backs of addicts.

A question:- is smoking when on oxygen really dangerous

Yes. You can set yourself on fire. My DH knows a patient that did it. O2 goes bang.