Force Quit
Force Quit is what you do on a Mac when a program freezes to remove the offending program from memory. Force quit also appears to be what the DHBs have in mind to achieve their goal of 80 per cent of hospitalised smokers be given advice and help to quit. Most DHBs are way under this goal and the suggestion is:
“they want all smokers who are admitted to hospital to be offered nicotine replacement therapy for the duration of their stay and afterwards if the patient wants to make an attempt to quit smoking long-term.”
So far, so innocent. But I have worked in Tokoroa hospital where the ban on smoking extends to the entire hospital grounds. Patients are left with no choice but to take the nicotine patches (or go cold turkey). I am under no illusion that this sort of regime will spread to all hospitals eventually. It is the inevitable result of removing the “smoko” rooms from the hospitals and forcing patients and staff outside.
Smoking is certainly the worst thing you can do for your health, barring throwing yourself under a bus. I greatly support the idea of encouraging smokers to give up their dangerous addiction by offering them whatever help they may need. But it seems to me to be needlessly cruel to insist that the 65 year old woman with respiratory failure be made to stop smoking every time she comes into hospital. Sure, stopping smoking may extend her life for a few months or a year, but shouldn’t she be making that choice? A bit of coercion is often good for young people, as they often do not appreciate the end result of their actions, but this lady is the end result. Her decision is only too well “informed”.
Virtually forcing people to quit smoking is unlikely to have any permanent benefits as almost all people pressurized in this way will restart.
This has always seemed to me an area where hospital rules can be absurdly rigid and patient-unfriendly. The target of 80% (soon to be 90%) “quit smoking” proselytizing is not making hospitals any patient-friendlier, nor is it helping the smoking population.
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Nov 29 09 12:02 am
Aren’t the psych wards still some kind of safe haven for smoking? It’s one thing ripping the fags off the grannies. Try getting between the off-kilter and their ciggies.
Health without dignity is forced medication.
Indeed.
Nov 29 09 6:52 am
At a time when we hear so much about the rights of criminals, welfare beneficiaries, illegal immigrants and just about anything and everybody, doesn’t it seem a little odd that smokers alone have no right to consume a legal, state-taxed drug?
The hospital where I work is 100% “smoke free” yet while an emergency dept doc has to sneak outside and stand in the weather for a quick drag, half a dozen family members can descend on a ward and make life hell for the other patients with their out of control brats and loud televisions because that’s their “right”.
*spit*
kg´s last blog ..‘BRAVE NEW SCHOOLS’
Nov 29 09 9:03 am
Tauranga Hospital has the same complete non smoking policy, and apparently have employed some busybody full time to run round enforcing it. The busybody doesn’t offer any advice about giving up I am told just demands that no one smokes anywhere on the hospital grounds and offers lectures on the the unhealthiness of the habit.
The line of staff and the occasional patient standing on the roadside outside the hospital puffing away is not an attractive look. I fully agree it is a smelly unhealthy nasty habit but aren’t things going too far.
I recall when my father in law died of cancer of the kidney the medical staff fully supported his right to smoke until the day he died – they would take him outside if there was no one else round to take him. As most of them said why make his dying more traumatic for him when it wasn’t going to help at all if he gave up smoking at that point.