Saturday, 1st November 2008
Smoking made acceptable at hospital
The Malta Medical Students' Association (MMSA) would like to bring to light the current smoking policy being adopted at Mater Dei Hospital.
As the only local medical student organisation, MMSA undertakes a lot of work to inform and educate the public on medical issues. A considerable amount of effort is expended on anti-smoking campaigns in particular. As a representative organisation of future doctors, MMSA has the public's health at heart.
Thus it is quite shocking to find that the administration at Mater Dei not only fails to condemn smoking, but in recent weeks seems to be promoting it. Mater Dei should have been a no-smoking hospital from the start, as are other state-of-the-art hospitals abroad.
Smoking should be prohibited on hospital grounds, and in the case of Mater Dei, this should include areas such as the ring road and car parks. After all, our hospitals should be the pinnacle of the efforts made to promote public health.
Ever since the opening of Mater Dei, people could be seen smoking outside every entrance to the hospital, to the extent that not only would entrances reek of smoke, but one would also find cigarette butts littering the surrounding areas. Despite being highly inappropriate, one would close an eye to such practices in the light of efforts to avoid smoking within the hospital proper.
Subsequently, jerry-cans half filled with water appeared in the internal courtyards of the hospital. These makeshift ashtrays presented an unacceptable situation, especially since such areas are opposite the in-patient wards. Staff, relatives and even patients were to be seen puffing away, flying in the face of health warnings meant to stop people being admitted into hospital in the first place.
The way things have developed at Mater Dei makes it seem as though the hospital is now promoting smoking. Over the past couple of weeks, the aforementioned courtyards have been supplied with stand-alone ashtrays. By providing them, one is portraying the picture that smoking is acceptable in that area.
To make matters worse, these courtyards, at the epicentre of the building, have now officially been labelled by hospital administration as Designated Smoking Areas. It is completely unacceptable and inappropriate to see these things in any hospital.
MMSA would thus like to appeal to the relevant authorities to remove the ashtrays, to remove the Designated Smoking Areas and to make Mater Dei and all the hospital grounds a no-smoking zone, enforced by at least a small fraction of the army of on-site security guards.
By doing so, the hospital will once again be able to broadcast its message of public health and return to being a state-of-the-art, smoke-free environment.
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Comments
Correction: The law prohibits smoking in ENCLOSED public spaces. The MMSA is seeking to ban smoking in the car parks, ring road, and other open spaces.
The smoking ban was justified on the grounds of respecting the interests of non-smokers(most of whom, it should be said, are tolernant folk). Now we are moving on to the hounding and persecution of smokers, even when there are no health or other risks to non-smokers involved. It has nothing to do with health, but all about control-freakery. We are moving from the nanny-state to an Inquisition.
Come on just admit smoking is bad point blank! It was the smokers choice to start smoking..they got addicted no one forced them! Mater Dei should ban smoking in all the areas..thus making life difficult for all the smokers...just as the smokers make life miserable for us non smokers!
The law prohibits smoking in public places. So the policy should be NO SMOKING and BIGGER FINES for those who smoke in hospital. Moreover, I suggest that smokers will have to pay for treatment for ailments due to smoking since it will have been self-induced.
Robert Attard
The excise duty does not event start to pay for the expenses involved in health care due to smoking.
Sick people have enough on their plate without the added contribution of those who in an irresponsible manner pollute the areas with second hand smoke.
So those who cannot control the urge can smoke outside the confines of the hospital and the administration should make sure that these instructions are strictly adhere to by the hospital staff, patients and visitors
It is not only the danger emanating from smoking that is the point, here. It is also the message that the hospital is giving. The Administation should do its utmost to ensure that there is absolutely no smoking anywhere within the hospital itself, in order to further highlight the argument against smoking.
The young Medical students ought to be commended for their stance. Indeed, such a stance is parallel to what the European Union is striviing for - to ban all smoking in public places, whether indoors or outdoors, throughout the Union.
Smoking is so dangerous and unhealthy that any stance in favour of the no-smoking policy cannot be described as 'absolutist'.
And if there are smokers out there who simply cannot - read, will not! - stop smoking, well then, stay away from the hospital. Any hospital or clinic!
The 'logical' extension to this absolutist stance would be to also ban any traffic that is propelled by an internal combustion engine from entering the ring road or the car parks - unless they are physically pushed into place!
While one can remain, albeit uncomfortably, for five minutes in an enclosed space where someone is smoking, it would be suicidal if one were to try staying in such a place where even a small internal combustion engine is running.
I do not want to be a smoker and I have tried most treatment methods to give up my habit including patches, drugs and even hypnotherapy.
However, the non smokers should realise we smokers also suffer.
Whilst I appreciate that my second hand smoke is not pleasant and may be harmful to your health.
Do you drive a car or travel by public transport producing toxic fumes which are hamful to my health?
Do you travel by bicycyle? How many toxic fumes ere produced during its manufacture?
If you walk everywhere I asssume that you wair clothes & shoes. How many toxic fumes are produced during the manufacture of these items?
Do you use electricity which is produced from fossil fuels and polutes my atmosphere and is harmful to my health?
Do you pay taxes on cigarttes which generate more revenue for the health service than what is expended on smoking related illnesses?
Just be a little more understanding to us nicotine adicts.
Bob Nock
It does not matter for them, whether
- a patient has to walk longer to smoke a cigarette.
- a nurse or doctor gets nervous because he/she could not smoke, because it would take to long to get back to the hospital. This definitely will not improve their service to the patients, it will do the opposite. Or worse they would leave for a longer time to smoke a cigarette, which would reduce their time for the patients.
- a visitor, who is passing the stressful waiting time, during a relative gets operated, has to walk back longer to the hospital.
Their demand has nothing to do with public health. The hospital will always be state of the art, whether smoking is going on in the car park or outside the hospital. It matters what is going on inside the hospital. This is what makes it state of the art.
What I personally find very distasteful is the fact that these areas are actually accepted and "applauded" by the very same administration that should, in effect, be promoting health.
@ Azzopardi & Grech
If today's medical students didn't speak up to point out unhealthy choices then I personally would be very concerned. Doesn't this mean that the future doctors of Malta have got the correct frame of mind to make our environment safer for you and for all smokers AND non-smokers!?
@ Joe Public
I will not go into what smoking can cause - anyone can find thes with a quick search on the net. But quitting may be a more tempting notion as the financial benefits are definitely going to be more useful in paying the electricity and water surcharges.
The practice of providing smoking facilities (designated areas, ashtrays, shelters etc) can be interpreted as encouragement by some smart lawyer acting on behalf of a staff member suffering from lung cancer in the future.
This same scenario put shivers down the backs of corporation executives in my part of the world who now forbid staff to smoke anywhere within a certain distance of their building; let alone within it.
At my local hospital in South London there is no smoking allowed anywhere in the hospital grounds, whereas previously there were shelters where people could gas themselves.
The downside not allowing smoking in any workplace means that the streets have become smoking rooms and the smokers still selfishly drop their cigarette butts on the ground because they expect somebody else to pick them up. Why not keep a little tin box on their person in order to deal with this litter.
Now when I go out at lunchtime for a bit of fresh air I am totally sorrounded by smokers who selfishly blow their smoke over me.
The problem governments have is that they earn huge amounts of taxation from tobacco companies on one hand and then have to spend a lot of that money on dealing with the medical effects of smoke, which smokers would have us believe are a complete myth!
The governments need the money so they just make token efforts, in collusion with the tobacco companies, to try to make it look like they are against smoking themselves!
Why not stop smoking and spend your money on something more healthy?
"The taxpayer is spending millions of euros to cure what cigarettes cause"
What about the excise duty included in the price of each packet?
If someone is addicted, it's not too much such person can do and if patients are smokers, they should have an area where they can smoke.
The students' maximalist ideologically-motivated logic sadly betrays their inexperience in the real world.