 Patients and staff will get help with quitting smoking |
The Queen's Medical Centre in Nottingham is introducing a total ban on smoking anywhere on its site from 1 January. It means staff, patients and visitors will not be able to light up anywhere on QMC premises, including the areas around entrances to buildings.
The move is intended to benefit both staff and patients by reducing the number of smokers and passive smoking.
The government wants all NHS buildings to be non-smoking by the end of 2006.
The hospital has set up a dedicated area of its website to giving up smoking.
Patients who smoke will be offered free nicotine replacement therapies and one-to-one help through the "new leaf" clinics.
Staff will also have access to the "new leaf" clinics, as well as a confidential NHS helpline service, and discounted nicotine replacement therapies.
The initiative follows research which has shown smokers working in a smoke-free workplace are four times as likely to quit as other smokers - and that passive smoking can lead to heart disease, lung cancer and can make conditions like asthma worse.
But the pro-smoking lobby believes the hospital should have a designated space for people to light up.
Simon Clark, director of pro-smoking group Forest, said: "It may appear logical to ban smoking on hospital premises but administrators have to live in the real world - hospitals are stressful places not just for patients but also for staff and visitors."
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