31 May 13:36 | Lou Dieter said...

We are a community health system preparing to go to a Tobacco-Free campus on Nov. 15. 2007. One of the main concerns has been enforcement of the policy, especially for employees who are used to taking several smoke breaks. Now, they will have to go off-campus to smoke. We plan to encourage the use of NRT during working hours and/or using Chantix in an effort to quit. But, as we all know, people have to want to quit before these aids will be truly helpful. For Health Systems that have already gone Tobacco-Free, how have you handled this issue?

31 May 15:57 | Scott Williams said...

Lou,

Traffic on the site is low (as we will not announce it publicly until nex week), so you may not get a response right away. I would encourage you to speak with MelvaFagerOkun in North Carolina. She has helped dozens of hospitals in North Carolina become tobacco free, and I suspect that she could connect you with a few that have experience with the issues your are struggling with. Click on her user page (above) to get her contact information.

18 Jun 18:09 | Joanne Hafner said...

Would like to suggest that we edit this entry by taking some of the content from this section to create a new Research Report that specifically highlights the North Carolina experience. I would leave the content that is more broad-based and applicable to the topic as the intro. I will plan to do this if there are no objections. thanks.

19 Jun 13:09 | Scott Williams said...

Joanne,

I agree with your suggestion. I think that would improve the flow of the main topic page.

10 Jul 15:30 | Carol Evans said...

what are hospitals doing that have gone to smoke free campuses for the patients that insist on going out for a smoke?

11 Jul 12:26 | Scott Williams said...

Carol,

I have recently been in contact with Beth Davidann at Castle Medical Center in HI. In a few days she will post their smoke-free campus implementation experiernce. When she does, I would suggest re-posting this comment/question on her page. She may be able to help you.

13 Sep 20:01 | Bruce Cunha said...

Hi I am the chair of or tobacco free campus program. We went live with our no tobacco use on our facility property program on May 1 2007. We started getting smokers prepared for this starting back in January of 2007. My facility made smoking/tobacco cessation programs and pharmiceuticals available free to any employee that wanted to quit smoking or using tobacco.

On May 1, we removed our outdoor smoking areas and required anyone who wanted to smoke (Employees and Patients) to do so off our premisis. Only exception was that our administration does allow employees to go to their cars and smoke during nonpaid time (basically over lunch only). Managers were given instructions relating to not allowing employees to leave during paid time and also to not allow employees that have an offensive odor of smoke to return to work.

We anticipated this was going to be a real battle. It turned out to not be a problem. We do see a few employees across the street from our facility, but overall, they have just vanished.

We did get some who took us up on the smoking cessation programs, but we do not feel it was near the number of smokers we had.

We have 7000+ employees in 43 centers.

Our enforcement was left to the employees and managers. We did not establish a smoking police but did have an extra security person patrol the campus for the first couple of months.

14 Sep 12:51 | Scott Williams said...

Bruce,

This is great! Could I convince you to most this on the main topic page as a field experience? This is exactly the kind of description that I am hoping users will post as field experiences. They can be as brief or detailed as people like. The goal is to get them posted as field experiences so that users can sort through them and find examples of what is working out in the real world. Let me know if you have questions or need help posting.

Thanks,

Scott

03 Dec 22:56 | Lou Dieter said...

Question on Keeping Smoking Receptacles after Implementation of Tobacco-Free Campus Policy Our community hospital campus went "Tobacco-Free" on Nov. 15, 2007. Overall, it appears compliance has been good. Some concern has been expressed about the cigarette butt litter now that the smoking receptacles have been removed. I believe this problem will go away as people become more familiar and aware of the policy. What have other health systems done who have gone tobacco-free, to handle the litter problem?

21 Dec 14:05 | Scott Williams said...

03 Dec 22:56 | Lou Dieter said... Question on Keeping Smoking Receptacles after Implementation of Tobacco-Free Campus Policy Our community hospital campus went "Tobacco-Free" on Nov. 15, 2007. Overall, it appears compliance has been good. Some concern has been expressed about the cigarette butt litter now that the smoking receptacles have been removed. I believe this problem will go away as people become more familiar and aware of the policy. What have other health systems done who have gone tobacco-free, to handle the litter problem?