Smoking outside hospitals. Can l contact someone?

[Moier]

This Morning.. talking about smoking in public places.. especially hospitals.
This week l was waiting at the entrance of my local hospital waiting for a pick up after having a procedure.
Despite all the notices about not smoking in the area l literally counted 23 people and 9 were patients in wheelchairs...some with drips.. and three in NHS uniforms.
The smell was horrible.
I now think the time has come for enforcement or action.
Security were about .. but no one saying anything.
3 Yards away is a smoking shelter but that was empty.
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I want them to go somewhere where I don't have to walk through a fug of smoke to get to my appointment/visit. Like the smoking shelter. It's like this at Blackburn Royal - patients smoking at the doors and then, because the car park pay machines are really near the entrance you have to continue to breathe it in.

Well they can can't they otherwise they'd not have been able to get themselves off the ward. Wards aren't generally at the entrance to the hospital so they've been able to make that trek.

There is a smoking shelter they can go to if they really have to smoke.
I agree with OP it is horrible. I have had to walk past people smoking a the entrance to a hospital before, ill it made me cough and feel sick.
People with serious respiratory illnesses also have to walk through a fog of smoke to get into the hospital.

My local hospital is the same. I can’t walk through the door without the smoke flaring up my asthma, which is usually the reason I visit.
Then again when leaving, and until I can wash my clothes.

It’s possible to have empathy for patients who may be in horrific situations, but there are designated places to smoke that are as accessible as the only entrance/exit to the hospital.

Incoming patients should not have to suffer from second hand smoke, and considering most hospitals ban smoking in their grounds I’m amazed patients are allowed to congregate at the door where it cannot be escaped by anyone!

But it does harm other people that is OPs point.

I imagine the staff offered to take them so they get a fag break too.

Sounds like your local hospital has the right idea. It’s silly people keep banging on about “what about the sick people or their visitors being addicted to smoking or under stress”.

What about the sick and stressed people who are not smokers but have to wait in that area like @Moier or at the very least walk through this cloud of smoke?

It’s completely out of order. Definitely complain OP.

When my DD was born it was really hot weather but you couldn’t have the window open (I had the window bay) because all the smokers were outside. Absolutely vile.

I didn’t want my literal newborn breathing it in.

They should crack down on it, it’s so antisocial. I don’t give a flying fuck what “bad time” they are having, it’s pathetic behaviour
that impacts others. Their needs do not trump the health of others.

I asked the nurse about this when I was on the ward for 5 weeks.

There was basically a small area where you could smoke, but it was covered in no smoking signs. I wasn't allowed to leave the hospital and it had no 'grounds' bar this pavement directly outside both the main doors.

She told me the no smoking signs were for staff, not patients!
I must admit I never ever did see a doctor or nurse smoking there. I wonder where they go?

The fact is people who are in hospital who smoke often can't really move far. So they do need to be able to do it somewhere. Their lives are hard enough if they are there in the first place!

Visitors should smoke further away from the building though ideally. They should put up smoking sheds or something in the car park if they have space. But my hospital has no land around it at all.

Hear hear…I have asthma too and grew up in the 90s where people still smoked on buses and bus drivers turned a blind, so I’m hugely intolerant of passive smoking as an adult. Even as a child I was just baffled by how selfish (some) smokers were.

My neighbours used to smoke and their kids that I was friends with hated it.

The kids told me the smell made them sick, but yet their parents continued, and yes I understand the nature of addiction but they could’ve just stepped out into their garden to smoke or the grassy space behind their garden where you’d get an occasional dog walker but was mostly empty.

The hospital I worked in put a smoking shelter next to the huge oxygen storage tank.
Amusingly we were supposed to congregate there in the event of fire. 😂

@Moier

Go for it. Write to the chief executive or PALS. A letter of course.

I went to Addenbrookes where there are signs saying "we are a smoke-free hospital". I resist the temptation to add "not" using a felt pen.

I am very unhappy when you see members of staff pushing smokers in wheelchairs! Surely they could be given patches?

They even announce that it’s a smoke-free site on the tannoys but people still stand there and smoke

Just walk past. You don't know their circumstances.
I question the risk of passive smoking whilst outside, when it just blows away anyway
I don't smoke now, but I used to
Live and let live is one of my mottos

You're essentially not wrong & I've some...uh...experience in the vaping situation but it's very identifying so I rarely get involved on here.

Nevertheless, banning things just doesn't work you both push it underground into the hands of criminals whilst simultaneously increasing it's stigma which increases it's appeal to susceptible ppl.

Further stigmatising smokers doesn't work either, it's just bullying at this point. You cement the pariah status & push smokers further away from behavior change. It's a delicate balance in which ppls lives are quite literally at stake.

I wonder what costs the NHS more? Smoking related disease or obesity related disease? I wonder whether there would be less obesity if people hadn't stopped smoking? Fag instead of a doughnut?

They are outside, the pollution from cars is more of an issue than highly highly highly diluted cigarette smoke.

99% of the rest of the site both inside & outside is cigarette smoke free (which can't be said for other pollutants).

Does it stink? Yes. Would it be better for them to stop/switch? Yes.

Is it your place to further bully & dehumanise them further than society does every single day?

No, no it isn't.

Not outside it doesn't, not as a rule. The difference is that you can see & smell it unlike the fumes from the cars which you inhale all the time.

I've a low tolerance, I'm afraid, for relentlessly bashing smokers and I say that as someone who just lost a friend, YESTERDAY, to fucking lung cancer.

I've also a lot of experience in the field of smoking & harm reduction & this constant desire to openly shit on smokers does nothing at all to help them. Show me another group who ppl are so gleeful in sneering at?

We won't need to worry anyway soon as Keir Starmer seems to be considering an outdoor smoking ban.

Why can’t the smokers just smoke in the designated smoking areas? Why should their selfishness of lighting up right in/by the doorway and other public areas have to be tolerated by those who cannot support tobacco smoke because of their health?

I don't think they should be punished but I wholeheartedly agree with the op when they say something should be done about it. I have had asthma attacks that have be triggered by cigarette smoke. I have been late for appointments waiting for the coast to be clear outside the hospital entrance. Any person smoking so close to the entrance to any building is being thoughtless and selfish .

Try being a chemo patient having walk through the thick fog of fag smoke when you already want to throw up.

They still have to walk through it, often whilst feeling very ill already. Thry shouldn't have to.

A nurse once told me that smokers typically mobilise themselves much more quickly after surgery than non-smokers, motivated by wanting to go outside and smoke.

Easy solution to this. See them boxes they put at airports for all the smokers to enjoy their own fumes, put one of them outside every hospital and charge to enter. If they can afford to smoke, they can afford to pay to enable them to enjoy it in hospital building.

Everyones a winner.