Care Opinion

Over the past week I have been ...

Story from nhs.uk

"Over the past week I have been ..."

About: Gloucestershire Royal Hospital

(as a relative),

What could be improved

Over the past week I have been a daily visitor to one of the Tower Block wards at Gloucestershire Royal Hospital. On every occasion, both entering and leaving via the Tower Entrance, I have had to make my way past an assortment of people flouting the smoking ban. These people even included patients in their bedclothes. This creates a very bad impression of the Trust's commitment to health education, and I would be interested to know what measures are in place to tackle the problem.

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Responses

Response from Gloucestershire Royal Hospital 16 years ago
Gloucestershire Royal Hospital

Submitted on 21/02/2008 at 11:19
Published on nhs.uk on 17/07/2008 at 09:30

The Trust is extremely aware of the impact of smokers who continue to ignore the ban on smoking in our hospital grounds and has tried various methods to encourage poeople not to smoke or to leave the premises when doing so.

Some of these measures have included high profile launch of the smoking ban - the Trust was one of the first in the country to go Smoke Free across all sites, including the grounds of the hospitals; pressure from the local media has been encouraged because many many hospital patients and visitors find it unpleasant; we plan to install talking alarms which ask people to put out their cigarette when smoke is detected; staff are also empowered to ask people not to smoke although this is sometimes difficult as patients can become aggressive.

It would be very helpful to hear any suggestions that readers may have about how else to tackle this difficult on-going problem.

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