Hospital: staff will be trained to approach smokers
Saturday, January 18, 2014 at 10:12 The Derby Telegraph reports:
Royal Derby Hospital gets tough on enforcing smoking ban.
I'm a bit cheesed off because the reporter rang me yesterday for a quote.
We spoke for several minutes. I queried whether getting staff to "patrol the grounds" or training them "to approach smokers" was the best use of scarce NHS resources.
I also said the usual things - hospitals can be stressful places, blah blah blah, and being harassed to quit smoking was unlikely to help.
None of my comments are included in the story, which is incredibly one-sided.
I don't blame the journalist. What normally happens is that the reporter includes the quote in the copy he or she files but the sub editors delete it for reasons of space (not applicable online) or because it doesn't suit the newspaper's agenda.
As it happens, the Derby Telegraph is strongly in favour of a ban on smoking on hospital grounds, as this editorial comment makes clear:
Total smoking ban is correct for Royal Derby Hospital
As it happens I'm familiar with Derby Royal Hospital because my father, who is on dialysis, has been going there - three days a week - for several years.
It's a vast, relatively new hospital with long soulless corridors that take an age to walk.
It also has a restaurant, a convenience store and a Costa Coffee franchise.
Yes, I've seen patients and visitors hanging around the entrance having a cigarette.
Am I bovvered? No. They're in the open air and the area around the entrance is so spacious you would be hard-pressed to get close enough to someone to inhale even a whiff of their tobacco smoke.
Frankly, this is a storm in a teacup whipped up by a local newspaper with nothing better to write about.
Reader Comments (2)
Unfortunately this is my local city hospital and my local newspaper. I do not have an especially high regard for either but did comment on the editorial and will be keeping an eye on the person behind it as I suspect that we will be subjected to more one-sided healthist nonsense from that direction.
"I don't know if this applies to all NHS hospitals"
It does.
They have no mandate under primary legislation, so can't enforce it as they have no powers to do so.