Hospital spokesman Kirk Lower said: "We encourage people not to smoke, but the reality is that people want to and we're trying to manage that situation."
The site in Gorleston officially became a smoke free zone on National No Smoking Day in 2005, but smokers are regularly seen lighting up outside the main entrance.Where it’s perfectly legal to do so. And so they are planning to build shelters to encourage them to move away from the main doors. Good idea?
Well, yes. Of course.
Mr Lower said the hospital was "not conceding defeat, it's recognising the reality of the situation. We have got signs, we have staff come out to ask smokers not to smoke or move off our premises - it doesn't work".
"We have thousands of visitors to the hospital, often in times of stress, and many of them have a need to smoke - they are addicted to nicotine."Who could possibly disagree? Oh. Right.
I forgot these people, who Leg-Iron rightly dubs the spiteful and the stupid:.
But Patrick Thompson, from the patient group Norfolk Link, said rebuilding smoking shelters on hospital grounds sent out the wrong message.What, the message that when an organisation makes an error of judgement, it’s wrong to correct it?
"We'd like the site to be a non-smoking site, but 'the site' is only covered by the building and not the outside areas.
"We don't want to see it happen, but I think to encourage smokers moving away from where they are at the moment and have to walk even further - they might consider given up even more."‘We’..? Is that the Royal We?
Who are you to demand that the ‘site’ referred to should cover the whole grounds?
Who are you to consider that a worried relative of a hospital patient should be put to further stress and inconvenience, in order that they be forced into doing something you prefer?
So who are ‘Norfolk Link’?
What sort of ‘patient group’ are they? What sort of research have they carried out, what surveys have they run, to know that this is the most pressing matter for hospital patients in Norfolk?
And the answer seems to be....none. They are just spiteful. And stupid.
Update: Nannying Tyrants also has this one, and points out something the Beeb carefully leaves out; Thompson is Dr Thompson.
8 comments:
People really need to brush up on their legal rights and state them when necessary. TPTB only get away with this kind of crap because people don't any better about even the basics.
Whatever they would like you to do or not do here the fact remains that it is legal to smoke.
Grrr...should read *don't know any better....you need an edit facility for people like me who type faster than they can think and miss words out Julia :S
Any patient in the NHS trusts in the South West now have to be referred to a senior clinician to "create a plan to manage their smoking" before treatment.
Talk about waste of time and money, not mention the de-humanising effect this type of policy intentionally creates.
"People really need to brush up on their legal rights and state them when necessary."
Quite!
"Talk about waste of time and money, not mention the de-humanising effect this type of policy intentionally creates."
Oh, I've no doubt whatsoever it's 'working as intended'.
Anyone, or any organisation, is able to institute a "no smoking" 'rule' if they want to.
Many places, even before the famous law, had policies of not smoking on their premises. It is perfectly possible, and legal to have no smoking as part of the employment conditions.
Since hospitals spend a significant amount of time and money trying to contain the problems people cause to themselves, I consider they are, perhaps, better "qualified" to have a say on the problem.....and I'm not talking [just] about lung cancer, which is a small problem that smokers have, but others such as COPD (which kills more, and costs more to treat)
It must be pretty dehumanising to occupy a hospital bed for the last few months of your life, unable to move or feed your self, while the oxgen feed is increased to some 10 litre/minute and you slowly die of internal organ failure.
Your choice.
Your choice.
Yes it is. How annoying for you.
No it's not. Annoying that is.
As the NHS changes to a private service, and resources dry-up (down 20 billion in a year), choices will have to be made.
Who gets care ?
Who gets treated ?
To a certain extent those situations are happening now, in the [near] future they will happen more often. Those involved in car accidents already have their emergency care paid for, via insurance.
My local hospital operates a no-smoking-within-the-grounds rule. Which they can [legally] do. Anyone can. No law needed. You only have the right to smoke subject to others tolerance.
Norfolk Link's strapline is "influencing health and social care". Inevitably, when one drills into their FAQs on funding, one finds this:
"Where does our funding come from?
The government decides how much money the LINk should receive and the funding is held by the County Council."
So, yet another taxpayer-funded organisation lobbying the government to make taxpayers' lives a little bit more miserable.
Well, what a surprise!
DK
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