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 agree London

I too smoke and if I was a patient I'd move well away from the doors. If visiting or appointment I'd wait until I left the grounds.
It's rude and inconsiderate to be anywhere near the building, but likewise stupid and dangerous to expect patients to leave the grounds.

In Scotland there is a new law coming in to make it an offence to smoke within a certain distance of a hospital building _ will go Google hang on.

www2.gov.scot/Topics/Health/Services/Smoking

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

Apples and oranges. Smoking cigarettes isn't illegal like heroin is yet. And alcoholics don't need bar stools?

Providing shelters within a reasonable distance for people doing a perfectly legal thing - albeit it one that can affect and annoy others - is a better option than giving them no place to do something they're just going to do anyway and when they do, do it, they will be where it's most convenient for them.

Give them shelters away from everyone else and enforce the rules. One place I know has a tannoy system that security uses to tell the smokers to move away. They scuttle off, mortified at their own rule breaking and bad manners. It's very effective.

No benches to sit and smoke on at our NHS Trust .

However, it leads directly to the street and pavement so people tend to smoke there . There is one bench, just remembered, outside A&E people smoke at .
I smoke though I am using a vape now and doing well . I would smoke in the little green part with benches off the main pavement when I did though,

I'm on the fence. I don't think people should have to breathe in second hand smoke when in hospital, but, if someone is a hospital inpatient there should be somewhere they are able to smoke. People shouldn't have to cope with a cancer diagnosis etc and have their right to smoke taken away.

Psychiatric hospitals certainly should have a safe smoking space as some patients are unable to legally leave and should be able to smoke as an acute episode of mental ill health is not the time to even consider giving up smoking.

Smoking isn't illegal, it's not illegal to smoke outside.
Common decency and good manners should be enough to stop people smoking near the doors, notices don't always work.
Being pointed to a shelter is healthier for those entering the hospital, so yes there should be shelters, primarily for patients.

I agree London

I too smoke and if I was a patient I'd move well away from the doors. If visiting or appointment I'd wait until I left the grounds.
It's rude and inconsiderate to be anywhere near the building, but likewise stupid and dangerous to expect patients to leave the grounds.

I agree with you

Aggh bold fail , again

hospitals, shops, pubs....you can't try to get in or out of anywhere without getting a delicious lungful now. Smokers genuinely have no idea how revolting/choking and unpleasant it is - if they did I am sure those that currently do this would stop.

Alternatively, having seen several lovely mummies happily chuffing away with teenies in car seats, and sat next to older kids, in cars, with windows and doors shut, perhaps not.

Give it another generation and I think smoking in its current form will have died (excuse the pun) out and it'll be vapers or non-smokers.

Knowingly dosing yourself and those around you with poisonous chemicals......wow.

@WhentheRabbitsWentWild exactly it's just common courtesy. You don't smoke where other people are. If I'm waiting at a bus stop then I will stand well away from the stop and out of people's way. When I was in hospital and I was able to make it down for a cigarette when there were smoking shelters I made it to one for a cigarette. It is just really common sense and respect for others.

I don't get it.

If anybody suggested putting a bar in the hospital grounds to enable alcoholics to continue their self destructive behaviour, there'd be uproar, but smoking it seems is fine.

Erm, smokers don't expect a kiosk to sell them, they bring their own.
Wouldn't an alcoholic? in the form of a hip flask, or similar.
They wouldn't expect a bar or off license on the premises.

What a strange comment Fix

@CatnissEverdene maybe not. But you're not the most empathic tool in the box

In the hospital i work in, people are always smoking by the no smoking sign, and in one area lots of expectant mothers are smoking right underneath a sign and picture informing them in the dangers of smoking whilst pregnant. I just dont understand why they do it, or why they think other people want to breath in/smell of their smoke.

My ds has regular hospital appointments including all day stays. The last thing he needs is to breath in the smoke that circulates around the entrances. To the poster who says she only smokes when her child in in hospital, I understand only to well how stressful this is but dies that really mean my child and others have to suffer as a sequence?

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.

Maybe charge for the shelter and fine for anyone smoking elsewhere?