20 out of 10 to NHS! Set To Ban Smoking On Hospital Grounds

[golden]

@Kina,

I don't think its a case of well the patient wants to smoke in hospital ...

the patient may want antibiotics for their cold too but I don't think they should get them either- i am sure i could think of better examples if i tried.

I am all for patient empowerment. However this issue of not smoking whilst on hospital grounds is somehow very different.

Looking at the studies done, psychiactric patients BENEFIT a great deal from a smoking ban.

I have always thought this.

I have been seriously abused by smokers over the years on a physical/mental/emitional level and I have nothing but love for them


http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/1270481

However I often find its smokers with the cold-hearted attitudes - followed by certain x-smokers who then do become pious and judgemental ... not all do!


It looks to me like its a win/win/win situation...with the health of medics improving too !

Best
Golden

 

[peggy-sue]

Just found your post, Golden!
I do not, for one moment, think you are being cruel or heartless about it.
Frankly, I have been absolutely delighted at the civility and trying to understand each others' points of view that we have managed to maintain in this thread.

I do understand your despair at watching your mother doing this to herself, AND the nightmare you suffered as a child in a smoky atmosphere.

I do understand the frustration of shouting at your mother "why don't you just stop?"
I have shouted that at my own mother so often.
(Her response was that she wasn't an alcoholic, because she could and did stop when it suited her. It just didn't suit her, mostly.)

I've delighted it did put you off taking the filthy habit up.
It "normalised" smoking for me.

I really would be happy for it to be made illegal and for cigarettes (or even electric things) to be available to registered addicts only, via prescription.

The all-important thing is to prevent anybody starting. Then all the users will die in their own time, and it will be a thing of the past.

I don't want to have to go into hospital for anything.
But I'm pretty sure if I thought I would have to be there for a period of over, say 5 hours, without my electric thing, I wouldn't go at all.

 

[golden]

Yes, i forget this is a hot topic lol
I pleased you not taking the topic personally as I havent always got the head energy to think and re-think my posts from all angles.

I won't give credit to my parents for me not smoking though I think I was smoking enough via them passively !

i agree the children are all-important. I am concerned the e-cigs are targeting them by the looks of things. :/

But its the frustrated surgeons who I have been witnessing giving interviews over this issue. They are tearing their hair out as they see and treat their
patients.

You can see they have been worn down, demoralised and the system currently isn't supporting them and their advice to their patients.


Best
Golden

 

[MeSci]

Poor Michael had my claws in him from the moment I laid my eyes on him.
He was dancing away to the Waterboys, jig-a-jigging like mad, so full of pure, unadulterated joy that my heart lept.
I wanted some of that joy. That was what had been missing from my life, all my life.
And he was wearing a CND badge on his jacket.

He just didn't know I had my claws in him. I did.

He gave me a reason to want to live, he was worth quitting the booze for.
I wanted to be with him, learn how to share that joy in life MORE than I wanted to continue to drink.

I use to go back to Edinburgh and stay with my (still drinking and viciously alcoholic parents) to get off the booze, occassionally.

I hit the off-license on my way home - after being off it for up to 4 weeks.

I used the rehab experience to help me learn how to stay off it. I did get temazepan when I was there, to "help" sleep. It didn't. I was on carbamazepine, because I had had withdrawal fits. I stayed on that for about 3 years after quitting, just in case.

But taking up new hobbies with Michael, him taking up new ones with me, and being with a new crowd of lovely folk who drank, but only sociably, not getting wasted, was a new sort of life to get into - one in which I didn't do any drinking. I also took up OU, to give me something to do in the evenings.

He was incredibly supportive. Stuck with me for 3 years before I did, finally, quit for good.

We do seem to have wandered quite far from the point Golden was making, about the banning of cigarettes in public grounds of a hospital.

But making the point about what a complicated thing addiction is, is relevant, I believe.

Those who don't "get it" are far too quick to say;
"Give them cold turkey, teach the b***ards a lesson, force them to be "normal" like us".

When it is the living nightmare of "reality" that drives somebody to take something to alleviate it.

Wow - what a story! It would make a great film. Write that book immediately! I hope Michael is as happy as he makes you. And for goodness' sake make sure he lets you know when he is going mountaineering - you don't want to lose him!

I gave up with men but am happy with my cats. My drug use, and before that, straightforward self-harm (which I class as my first addiction) were almost certainly due to being well-and-truly Larkined by my parents (father and stepmother - can't remember my mother) on top of all the other stressful events and situations of my childhood. They were also probably the reason I couldn't make relationships work. I had no suitable role models.

This stuff is relevant as it illustrates the complexities of addiction. Being judgmental towards addicts is victim-blaming, just as is foisted on people with ME.

 

[MeSci]

It "normalised" smoking for me.

I really would be happy for it to be made illegal and for cigarettes (or even electric things) to be available to registered addicts only, via prescription.

The all-important thing is to prevent anybody starting. Then all the users will die in their own time, and it will be a thing of the past.

I agree with your post except the illegality bit. Prohibition doesn't work.

 

[peggy-sue]

"Prohibition doesn't work."
You do have a point there. A massive, insurmountable one.

Your Michael might still be out there, MeSci.
I had given up on men completely the night I met him. I was at a girlfriend's new flat, we were having a boozy, man-free evening together, I was quite specifically telling her that men were off the radar completely as far as I was concerned.

Then came a knock on the door, her new neighbour saying; "There's a bit of a party going on next-door, would you either please excuse the noise, or come and join us?".
We picked up our bottles, and went next-door. The rest is history.

I didn't have role models - although I found some useful ones in the Narnia books, but I did have a model of everything a relationship shouldn't be.

I've not read that Larkin before - it's wonderful. I am child-free, by choice. I know what a responsibility parents have towards their offspring, because I know what happens to the children when it goes wrong.
I know what power parents have over such tiny innocents.
That sort of immense power is not something I could ever handle or be responsible for.

The poem that summed up my feelings was Louis Mac Neice's; "Prayer Before Birth".
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/prayer-before-birth/



Golden, e-cigs are NOT targetting children, at least not that I know of.
That's something the scaremongerers are pushing.

Although, I have to say, that once all the smokers have converted, then they die off, it does rather leave an empty market space...

But blame capitalism and business practices for that, if it does happen.

Our local shop is "Over 18s only".
They state clearly that what they are doing is offering a much safer alternative way of taking nicotine to folk who are already smokers.
They have been open for a whole year now, anthere has not been one single non-smoker go in asking to try it. They do give free "tries" of flavours to the folk who do go in.
I asked specifically, just the other day.

I can't speak for internet companies. I don't use them.

 

[Undisclosed]

Simply banning smoking from the hospital grounds is unlikely to be a good answer. Like somebody else said -- prohibition doesn't work. The end result might be smokers smoking in toilets etc. I think the best answer would be for people to stop making health decisions for others and the best happy medium might be to ban smoking around hospitals and allow/provide e-cigs or other alternatives to patients so they aren't suffering withdrawal symptoms when in hospital.

I don't agree that banning smoking in psychiatric wards is beneficial -- maybe in the long term but certainly not in the short term. There are patients that can leave and go have a smoke outside and there are patients that are not able to do so. It's pretty simple to hand a patient a cigarette and they go have a nice smoke in the smoking area. It's not so simple to deny that patient a cigarette, have them get agitated, having to call a code white, having to give them a shot to calm them down etc etc. I have worked on a locked ward and I have seen my peers get assaulted because they didn't have time to get a patient their smoke. There actually have been studies that show smoking is beneficial for schizophrenics. I used to have many a good conversation with patients while they were having a cigarette, not so many when they were craving some nicotine (there were some rules re: number smoked per hour). There is also some research about the health benefits of nicotine and even some here use it for health reasons. I guess really it's just the method of delivery that is the issue unless you are chewing the gum or using the patch.

However I often find its smokers with the cold-hearted attitudes - followed by certain x-smokers who then do become pious and judgemental ... not all do!

I would assume smoking does not make people cold-hearted -- likely that way whether a smoker or not.
I would assume quitting smoking does not make people pious and judgemental -- likely they were that way to begin with.

Anyways, my bottom line is that health decisions are our own to make. The only thing I think should be absolutely banned from hospitals is CBT/GET for ME patients.

 

[golden]

Well , I m chuffed with the NHS and well impressed.

Sticking with 20/10



Handing the thread over now as its taken on a life of its own

Has there ever been a smokers/xsmokers/never smoked poll on pheonix rising ?

Best
Golden

 

[golden]

cross-posted with kina .

Thanks for your post.

Best
Golden

 

[peggy-sue]

I will make any visit you ever have to make to hospital a much better experience, Golden.

And I don't ever want to have to go anyway....
And I don't work in one any more, either.

 

[MeSci]

Your Michael might still be out there, MeSci.

Thanks, but I feel too set in my ways now. I'd have difficulty adjusting to catering for someone else's needs at close quarters and on a frequent basis. I have enough trouble managing to cater for my own!

I had given up on men completely the night I met him. I was at a girlfriend's new flat, we were having a boozy, man-free evening together, I was quite specifically telling her that men were off the radar completely as far as I was concerned.

Then came a knock on the door, her new neighbour saying; "There's a bit of a party going on next-door, would you either please excuse the noise, or come and join us?".
We picked up our bottles, and went next-door. The rest is history.

You really must write that book!

I've not read that Larkin before - it's wonderful. I am child-free, by choice. I know what a responsibility parents have towards their offspring, because I know what happens to the children when it goes wrong.
I know what power parents have over such tiny innocents.
That sort of immense power is not something I could ever handle or be responsible for.

The poem that summed up my feelings was Louis Mac Neice's; "Prayer Before Birth".
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/prayer-before-birth/

That is so moving.

But I thought you did have children - the same kind as I have?

 

[golden]

I will make any visit you ever have to make to hospital a much better experience, Golden.

And I don't ever want to have to go anyway....
And I don't work in one any more, either.

sweet

does anyone know how and where to post compliment to the blinkin' NHS ?

Best
Golden

 

[MeSci]

sweet

does anyone know how and where to post compliment to the blinkin' NHS ?

Best
Golden

The article you linked to was about NICE advising NHS service providers to implement such bans. Among other things it says

While individual NHS trusts will have the final say, staff and people using NHS services, including clinics, should be told not to smoke on the hospital grounds, Nice said.

And remember that it is a newspaper article, and although the Indy is relatively accurate as newspapers go, it may not have got everything right. Maybe the NHS or NICE websites have info about it?

 

[golden]

Had a quick look mesci but then...

zzzzzzz

and got bored.
not found anything so far. just after a compliment box to tick.


Best
Golden

 

[MeSci]

Had a quick look mesci but then...

zzzzzzz

and got bored.
not found anything so far. just after a compliment box to tick.


Best
Golden

But it's not an NHS decision - they have just been advised by NICE.

This looks like the NICE page about it, but the heading is 'Smoking cessation - acute, maternity and mental health services'. So not about general inpatients for physical illness.

 

[peggy-sue]

MeSci, I used to wear a badge on my lab coat which read; "Babies are only kitten substitutes."
But I don't look on the cats as being "children", they're our companions.

Sort of like having well behaved teenagers, without the hormones, around.


And... one does not have to live with one's partner.

(I just read your word "inpatients" as implants, and wondered what on earth they're going to do to smokers next!)