Chesterfield Royal Hospital tweets
Monday, July 6, 2015 at 8:15 The Derbyshire Times has published my response to the suggestion that smoking be banned across the entire site at Chesterfield Royal Hospital.
What's interesting is the reaction of the hospital's Twitter account.
On Saturday night, in response to a tweet that included a link to my previous post, @royalhospital tweeted:
So we should support a habit that causes cancer then? And allow patients to breathe in others' smoke?
Bearing in mind the hospital is currently consulting on the issue and has, allegedly, yet to make a decision, it seemed a little inappropriate.
Anyway it led to the following exchange:
@Forest_Smoking: Appalling response. Show some empathy for patients who smoke. Plus, no evidence of harm to others from smoking outside.
@royalhospital: personal responsibility 4where Usmoke - not where it affects others. Patients/visitors in distress supported #ProudtoCare
@Forest_Smoking: Smoking outside away from hospital entrances doesn't affect anyone. Do you have objective evidence that suggests otherwise?
Needless to say there was no response to this simple question. Later, however, after we suggested the tone of the hospital's tweets implied a decision to ban smoking across the site had already been made, we got this reply:
@royalhospital: definitely NOT made - survey will enable Board to make decision about new policy. 1897 views2 consider 1st - For & against
There were several more tweets I haven't posted here and the issue was given a further lease of life yesterday when the Derbyshire Times tweeted a link to my article, provoking several more comments from people for and against a ban.
Thankfully none of them were posted by @royalhospital which would do well to adopt a less partial position while the 'consultation' is ongoing.
I'm grateful nevertheless to Twitter for once again shining a light on the minds of those who work in public health.
To say they lack empathy for people who smoke is an understatement.
As for their ignorance of what constitutes a risk to public health - well, I'll leave that for another day.
Reader Comments (4)
Royal Chesterfield says : "Proud to Care" !!!! Only if they don't have to deal with dirty, filthy, child abusing, waste of NHS cash patients who smoke - including those of us now healthy grannies who they couldn't "save" in the 1960s as child smokers. They make me sick.
They wouldn't know the meaning of "caring" if it kissed their sick minds better.
This is a really good example of why the top heavy management of the NHS must be cut during this period of austerity. These leeches clearly have so little to do they have to find something to justify their jobs.
Years ago, just out of my teens I was an auxiliary nurse on a male geriatric ward in a Derbyshire cottage hospital. As one of the few male staff, I was supposed to deal with the 'blokeish' stuff, so one duty was to light up cigarettes for the old boys, which staff members routinely bought for patients as few had relatives. The sister made it plain that fags were to be lit as soon as I saw them come out of a pack, and it was rude and unprofessional to keep them waiting.
How times change. There are no cottage hospitals, no geriatric wards, and by the looks of this, no empathy or common decency left amongst Derbyshire hospital staff.
PS - lifelong non-smoker, but I'd have been ashamed to keep men who had seen WWI service waiting for simple pleasures at the end of their lives.
This provides more evidence that the "consultations" conducted to assess smoking bans are a charade. The decision is likely already made as it was in the case of plain packages where an overwhelming majority was against. The only real majority against smoking is in the tobacco control lobby and their antismoker minions. They suppress dissent and censor discussions so they can claim a democratic process.
Notice they did not respond to the call for objective evidence of harm to others from second hand smoke outdoors. That's because there is none, If actually pressed to provide objective evidence their case falls apart. The same is true indoors as well, since the studies show no such link or show weak association of risk at best.
Max Gent: 'I'd have been ashamed to keep men who had seen WWI service waiting for simple pleasures at the end of their lives.' And so would I have been. I'm appalled at the lack of love, of charity, of empathy, in these puritans. The instinct to persecute others in the name of 'virtue' is deep in human nature. It emerges in all sorts of culture, especially, at this moment, in branches of Islam, not to mention the NHS. If a dying man wants a cigarette, if a suffering relative wants to smoke, what concept of 'good' is served by denying them their comfort?