‘It’s just not good behaviour’: Hospital anti-smoking policy flouted by patients and visitors

Heh! They forgot to add Staff to that little eye-catcher?

The main thing that strikes me about this article is the insistence that the ban on smoking in the grounds is for a “healthy, clean and safer environment for patients, staff and visitors”.

Clean I can understand. Cigarette butts do tend to accumulate and can look unsightly but maybe the answer is to provide litter bins and ash trays?

Healthy is a joke. Seeing someone smoking does not really constitute a health hazard, does it? Or do they mean passing by a smoker and actually getting the smell of smoke? These are supposed to be health professionals, yet they get their knickers in a twist over the briefest of exposures to something that is harmless.

Safer? What the fuck is that doing there? I can understand that some members of ASH may spontaneously combust at the sight of a fag, but really?

Being somewhat of an expert on hospitals recently, I am delighted to say that this so called “problem” is repeated in every hospital I have visited. Strangely in each case the most popular spots for a quick smoke always seem to be under the “No smoking” signs. I wonder why? There again, it’s difficult to find a spot that doesn’t have a sign. The one thing we are constantly reminded of is cigarettes which seems to be a tad self defeating?

It is patently obvious that the hospitals’ mission is to force people off smoking whether the victim wants to quit or not. It’s one thing giving advice but to force people to stop doing something that’s perfectly legal and at a time when they are under great stress is nothing short of jack-boot tactics.

This time next week Herself should be out of surgery and confined to a healthy, safe, clean environment where of course she will be denied her comforting cigarettes.

So much for care and compassion.