Smoking at hospitals

[iwentothemfmountaintop]

For context, I work at a hospital.

I’m sat waiting for a lift home and a woman, obviously a patient, has come and sat next to me and lit up a cigarette. She’s facing towards me each time she exhales her smoke. We’re right under a smoke free site sign!

AIBU or should there be security making sure this type of thing doesn’t happen? For all she knows I’m a patient here for a respiratory illness, having cigarette smoke blown on me! It’s absolutely vile, it’s making me feel sick and giving me a headache, but there’s nowhere else for me to wait for my lift.

They can’t choose to have a non smoking mother.

The worst thing the NHS did was make all their sites smoke free. When there were smoking shelters that were accessible people used them, now people have to leave the (often massive) site they either can’t be bothered or don’t have time. You can’t shame people into quitting smoking, especially when they have a stressful job or have just received a harrowing diagnosis or their loved one is dying.

They’re aren’t any anymore that’s the problem.

I remember having my wisdom teeth out in hospital some 40 years ago and grumbled about having to go to the lounge to smoke!

You're probably fitter than a smoking patient. You work there, you have authority. Challenge her and be prepared to run if she kicks off.

Yes, my local hospital has a wheelchair shelter that the smokers seem to have commandeered. It's horrible because you have to wipe the fag ash off the wheelchair if you want one.

But I was rather amused to see the NHS staff squeezing behind the narrow gap behind the shelter to vape/smoke, in the hope no-one could see them.

There are no designated smoking areas at the Trust I work in. The staff who smoke will mostly leave the grounds but patients often don't get much further than outside the main doors. It's not pleasant but despite no smoking signs everywhere and a reasonable security presence, patients and family don't either care or aren't able to move far enough away from the main walkway.
I don't suggest people move or put their cigarette out because I get enough abuse already just doing my job!

Especially if its a smoking related disease eh?

Yes. It’s not rational but addiction isn’t. My colleague always talks of how she started smoking again when her mum was in a hospice dying of lung cancer. I’m not a smoker, I find it hard to understand but when you talk to smokers they always explain it like they know it doesn’t make sense and it’s not logical but the addicted brain takes over and they need it.

I assume you told her?

Yup, at our hospital they smoke around the back alongside the rear pedestrian access to the site. There's always around a dozen of them at any one time. Really doesn't set a good example.

I am sure all hospitals in Wales have no designated smoking areas. A ‘good’ idea in theory but this means that patients smoke just outside the main entrance where other people are waiting to be picked up etc. A dedicated smoker isn’t just going to stop for a day/week etc just because they’re in hospital.

It's not even just the patients, it's the visitors and chaperones too.

Especially outside A&E where they can be waiting anything between 8 and 10 hours.

100% agree. Why on Earth wouldn't you say something?!

It just to drive me mad when Mom was getting cancer treatment and she and the othet patients used to have to walk through a wall of smokers going in and out for treatment. You had bo way of avoiding them to go too or from the car park.
There was actually a patch of waste ground a couple of meters away that they could stand and smoke.

Dont be silly! All hospital staff are responsible for helping to maintain a safe healthy environment for patients and staff. Pojnt out the sign and politely but firmly ask her to out out the fag!

This is a tale as old as time.
I used to work in a children's hospital, and it went to strictly no smoking onsite. But no staff would dare confront an anxious parent having a ciggy outside the front door.
The bays in the cardiac ward used to smell of fags because both staff and visitors were smoking under it.

I don’t think there’s an easy solution to this, given that it’s a conflict of valid needs. Non-smokers don’t want to be near smoke, and find it especially offensive that it’s happening near a hospital. Smokers are addicted, may be going through the most difficult time of their lives and can’t reasonably be expected to just go cold turkey because they’re near a hospital. I was still a smoker when I was helping nurse my dad through stage 4 cancer. It was a living hell and certainly wasn’t a time when I could have stopped. If the hospital had abandoned the purist approach and provided a smoking area/shelter, I would have gone there, but they didn’t.

Some (many) staff smoke also. But they are usually found at the back of the bike shelters, which is where I bring my elderly relative for a smoke, or somewhere equally discreet in the hospital grounds. He's not able to walk far. It's not funny, but it is IYSWIM. The lengths he goes to in order not to be seen is amusing, sorry.
Would staff be disciplined workwise if caught smoking in the grounds? Just wondered, some of them must smoke (they do).

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That would be downright bloody dangerous

Yep, I did some training about the various gases used in hospitals. We got shown some grim pictures of the aftermath of people smoking when they are on oxygen.
Some were from years ago where people would smoke on the ward. They thought putting their oxygen mask/tubing on the bed would be ok. The oxygen still seeps out and soaks into the surroundings.

The first time I saw it I was gobsmacked. Presumably they've been told, but they need their fix.

If a complaint was made and they were identifiable then yes. ParticulaRly if in uniform/wearing their lanyard. Hence the attempts to hide/be discreet while not having the time to actually leave the site as expected.

Going and actually sitting next to someone who isn't smoking in order to light up is a pretty bloody easy thing to avoid.

Yes, I agree, that’s easily avoided. I don’t believe I suggested anyone should do that.