Smoke Ban At Hospital

Illawarra Mercury

Friday December 28, 2007

By COURTNEY TRENWITH

ILLAWARRA patients will no longer be able to slip out of their hospital ward in a dressing gown for a cigarette, with the area health service to ban smoking across all of its sites.

Patients, staff and visitors will be forced to leave health service premises, including hospitals and community health centres, for a smoko as of March 1, 2008.

The ban will apply to the entire South Eastern Sydney Illawarra Health region, bringing it into line with other NSW area health services that have already introduced the policy.

The announcement comes after a Wollongong Hospital patient complained in a letter to the editor sent to the Mercury last week about the number of people smoking near or adjacent to the Crown St entrance of the hospital.

"I even had to brush ash from my clothes as one person flicked their cancer stick as I walked in," the Horsley resident wrote. "It is about time the Illawarra health service stopped people from smoking near hospital doorways."

Chief executive Terry Clout said the area health service had been working on the policy to completely ban smoking since 2005, when NSW Health introduced its Smoke Free Workplace Policy.

"It's a difficult issue to do and it needs to be worked through," Mr Clout said.

"There are those that would argue that it should have happened quicker, but on the other hand those that smoke and work with us, or are longer-term patients ... would argue that we're probably doing it too quickly."

He said the ban was an opportunity for the service to lead by example in the campaign to reduce smoking.

"We know that smoking causes cancer, cancer kills people and it's a major, totally preventable disease when it's caused by smoking," Mr Clout said.

"It's very difficult for us to be putting the message into the community and not being a role model for the community in respect of those issues."

The area health service will set up support programs for staff and patients who need help to quit smoking.

The policy will apply to car parks, grounds, walkways and entrances and expands on regulations introduced in 1999 banning smoking inside health care facilities and vehicles.

© 2007 Illawarra Mercury

Back to News Index | Back to Home