No more ducking out for a smoke while waiting for a loved one to get out of surgery.
No more outside puff breaks between shifts or even sneaking a cigarette in the car while waiting for an appointment.
Beginning next month, the entire Howard County General Hospital campus will be smoke-free, following a statewide trend at hospitals.
“As a health care provider we think it?s our responsibility to maintain a fully smoke-free environment,” said Jay Blackman, executive vice president and chief operating officer at Howard County General.
The ban will launch Nov. 15, coinciding with the American Cancer Society?s Great Smoke Out.
By the end of the year, about two thirds of the state?s hospitals willbe smoke-free, including about nine that are planning to snub out smoking Nov. 15, said Nancy Fiedler, spokeswoman for the Maryland Hospital Association.
The policy includes a protocol for doctors to offer or prescribe a nicotine patch, gum or an inhaler for patients who smoke, said Blackman.
The hospital also is offering employees discounted smoking cessation classes.
Security staff won?t be the only ones enforcing the policy. Hospital managers will have a script with how to address patients and staff skirting the ban, Blackman said.
Planning for a smoke-free hospital campus presents unique challenges since staff and patients are on site all the time, presenting a greater stress on smokers, Fiedler said.
At St. Joseph Medical Center in Towson, which banned smoking last September, patients and visitors were the least of the problem, so the challenge was ensuring staff don?t try to get around the policy, said Christine Schutzman, community counseling and health education specialist at the hospital.
“My advice is you enforce it from the get go, and usually word gets out there,” she said.
