London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

Public health experts at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine have today called for all hospitals to move towards becoming smoke free, and develop initiatives aimed at encouraging staff and patients to quit or cut down.

In an editorial in today's British Medical Journal, Martin McKee and Anna Gilmore criticise a decision by the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast to build seven smoking rooms for patients and staff at a cost of £500,000, and argue that the money would have been better spent on implementing a smoking ban at the hospital, and developing smoking cessation initiatives.

'Some will argue that bans on smoking in hospitals will not work because of opposition by staff or patients, yet studies confirm that smoking bans can work in NHS hospitals if designed and implemented appropriately', they say.

The authors believe hospitals should go further and actively help patients give up, either before they come into hospital, or during and after their stay. They cite a trial which found that 90% of patients who received counselling and nicotine replacement 6-8 weeks before surgery either gave up or cut down, and were less likely to have postoperative complications or to need secondary surgery.

'It is shocking that our hospitals, which are supposed to safeguard the nation's health and educate the public about healthy lifestyles, are falling so far behind the rest of society in failing to implement smoking bans', the authors comment today. 'In many other countries, smoke-free working environments have been the norm now for some time, yet even in our hospitals, there is still a culture where smoking is tolerated and, in the case of the Royal Victoria Hospital, actively encouraged. This has got to change, and we hope that other hospitals facing a similar situation to the Royal Victoria will act differently in future'.

To interview either of the authors, please contact the LSHTM Press Office on 020 7927 2073.

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