Smoking in hospital grounds

[Penguincake]

I am spending a lot of time at the hospital for prenatal appointments because of a high risk pregnancy.

To get into the prenatal department I always have to walk through a group of smokers at the entrance. They stand next to huge no smoking signs and completely ignore them.

When I was going there for my last child, during a summer heatwave, they could not open the windows in the waiting room because too much smoke came in.

What is the point of hospitals declaring themselves smoke free if no one will enforce it?

I am not anti smoking and I smoked long ago. I just don’t understand why they can’t have the basic decency to go outside of the hospital grounds and why no one makes them.

I think shelters are a far better idea. Give them a shelter and let the security guard on the door (if they have one) ask them to move away to the shelter.
Move the smokers away from the entrances by giving them somewhere to go.
I don't smoke and hate the smell but can understand that there are a huge number of patients that do and stopping them being able to smoke will cause them a lot of stress and upset. They're stuck at hospital and they can't magically turn off their cigarette habit. Many also can't walk the sometimes long distance to take them right off hospital grounds. Our old hospital was 30m maybe to the edge of its grounds. The new one? At least 400m. Fine walk for a perfectly healthy person but you don't find many of those as hospital patients.

The saddest thing that I'd ever seen
Were smokers outside the hospital doors

From the great Editors song. Very true also.

People are selfish op. I agree with you it's shitty behaviour. I guess staff don't have the time or the inclination to enforce it. And why should they really, they'll only probably get abuse.

I used to smoke, but would never have done in the grounds of a hospital. I didn't do it in public at all though because I was ashamed of how disgusting and idiotic a habit it is.

My local hospital used to have a smoking shelter about two minutes walk from the door. Smokers still preferred to line the pathway up to the doorway, blowing smoke all over other patients and visitors.

A significant number of smokers are unbelievably entitled and self centred when it comes to their smoking habit.

Whose doing the smoking in your case OP, visitors or patients?

If it's patients, then they can't go outside the hospital grounds, if it's visitors, then I agree they should be given a shelter and there should be an attempt at moving people into them.

However, my DD (18) smoked just outside, because of stress, when my DH was dying. It needs to be done sensitively.

I think I stated I’m comment we stand away from doors 😂and under a bridge the opposite side of the road !

It's awful. When I was at the hospital in the summer when there was a heatwave there was a big colourful sign in one of the signs a few floors up saying 'My child is on oxygen. Please do not smoke under this window' you couldn't miss it.

There were still disgusting selfish fuckers puffing away underneath the sign because their need for a cigarette a few seconds earlier than it would take to walk the few extra metres to leave the hospital grounds is greater than the child's need for clean air to breath

I don't know what the answer is but it does really highlight how selfish people can be.

Smoking outside peoples room windows isn’t acceptable of course not. I find though no matter where you smoke if you anywhere ever a hospital people often feel the need to comment
Like I stated in the post across the road under a bridge which is probably at least 3 - 4 minute walk from the main entrance and people will still comment.
Windows and puffing in to doors of course shouldn’t be allowed to happen.

Our local hospital says smoking isn't allowed anywhere on the site and yet you have to weave in and out of the people smoking to get in through the entrance. I hold my breath.

At our local hospital, there is a crowd of smokers usually stood outside the main entrance in dressing gowns and with drips in their arms. It's actually really pitiful to watch.

Not exactly the sharpest tools in the box, are they?

It is awful. Visiting a friend in hospital seeing all those sick people still smoking inspired me to quit.

Yanbu.
My hospital has hoardes of people smoking NEXT to the entrance.
Opposite the entrace there is a ZEBRA CROSSING that has a smoking shelter on the end of it!
Walking the extra 10 steps is just TOO MUCH.

Its a joke. I hated it while i was PG.

The problem with providing smoking shelters in hospital grounds is that it normalises smoking and makes it appear that the NHS is okay with it.
Should we also provide a shelter for heroin addicts to inject themselves in the grounds? A few bar stools for the alcoholics?
My own Trust has recorded messages boomed from lamp posts in the grounds and along the paths, telling smokers to extinguish their cigarettes.
Inpatients are offered nicotine patches if they cannot go out to smoke. Staff and visitors who smoke are expected to wait until they leave, or go beyond the grounds to smoke, such as across the road.
It’s not the NHS’s job to facilitate addiction in anyone.

The thing is I suppose that if you are a smoker and you have to go to hospital (or accompany a child in hospital) you don't suddenly become a non smoker. The addiction is still there and being in hospital is stressful so those cigarettes become even more necessary?

Plus if there's rules and nobody is enforcing them why wouldn't you just stand just outside rather than trudge to the shelter/off site in your PJs with your dripstand?

I would shit a brick if a lamppost shouted at me

Birdsgottafly. The wing I go into is mostly outpatient departments so it is hard to tell if they are patients or visitors. Sometimes I see heavily pregnant women smoking there and that makes me very sad.

I am sorry that your DD was stressed when your DH died but that did not give her the right to smoke in the hospital grounds. Could they not manage to walk off-site? One persons "stress" does not give them license to be anti-social.

Should we also provide a shelter for heroin addicts to inject themselves in the grounds? A few bar stools for the alcoholics?

Well, injecting rooms save lives, so yes they should really.

Princess Anne in Southampton has shelters. People still smoke outside the door and no smoking sign though. You can see the shelter from the door but they still smoke there.

It’s the last bastion - only time I encounter smoke these days is when visiting a hospital.

Had major surgery a few years ago and was having the pre-op assessment with the consultant anaesthetist as the air con system bathed us both in a pall of fag smoke.

Someone up thread said that it cannot legally be enforced? Why not? They can fine people on aeroplanes, why not on hospital ground?. I am not being argumentative, I genuinely don't know.

Because it isn’t illegal to smoke outside. Local rules may say not to but that’s different to it actually being illegal

I vaped last time I was in, nipped out before my surgery and went off the ward as needed but the staff showed me a fire door that led to a back alley which I used

Patients can't be wondering around outside the hospital grounds, it's a stupid rule.
However, they should be moved from the doorways, I'm surprised they aren't tbh. Ours is pretty strict about this and does provide smoking shelters away from the doors.

Tbh, I think all smoking in public places should have to be in shelters, located where they won't be an inconvenience to others - and if that means several minutes' walk, all the better. Gives some exercise to counterbalance the unhealthy effects of the smoking and the inconvenience may make some decide to quit. I'm not sure why the convenience of addicts continues to come above others' desire or need not to have smoke blown all over them.

Hospital inpatients and long-term visitors (parents staying with children, for example) can be offered free NRT. A moment of me-time can be had by taking a coffee in a takeaway cup outside.

I'm a smoker, if I need a cigarette I will always either move off the hospital site or I will move to the car park away from others. I do think it was better when there was shelters as I didn't really see people congregating by the door ways. I personally try to be considerate of non smokers and smoke away from others. But I realise not everyone does this. If anywhere people should be more considerate it's outside hospitals.