Hospital to butt out

27/10/06
Smoking within the grounds of Perth's biggest health campus will be banned from the January 1 next year, just 65 days away.
Health Minister Jim McGinty said the smoking ban would cover all of the land, buildings, courtyards, gardens, walkways and car parks on the 28ha Queen Elizabeth II Medical Centre site, which includes Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital.
"Hospitals are places where sick people go to get well," Mr McGinty said.
"Our Hospitals should be promoting a healthy lifestyle and smoking is clearly not healthy - smoking kills.
"In this day and age, people attending hospitals should not be smoking and non-smokers should not have to tolerate passive smoke on hospital grounds."
The smoking ban will be phased in so that from January 1, 2007 all hospital staff and visitors will be prohibited from smoking anywhere on site while patients who are addicted to cigarettes will have until July to stop.
The Minister said this would give staff time to adjust to the change and progressively implement quit strategies for patients who smoked.
"To get the message out, a comprehensive awareness campaign starts today to alert staff, patients and visitors that smoking is not permitted anywhere on site," he said.
Mr McGinty said smoking accounted for about 1,500 deaths in Western Australia each year and cost the State tens of millions of dollars.
"In 2004, for example, more than 14,700 people were admitted to WA hospitals with smoking-related conditions," he said.
"Those patients occupied 82,000 bed days and cost the WA health system more than $78million."
Thousands of patients with smoking-related illnesses were treated at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital, which specialises in cancer treatment, cardiovascular medicine and diagnosing and treating respiratory illness.
Sir Charles Gairdner will become the third metropolitan hospital to introduce a total ban on smoking and follows the successful implementation of a smoke-free policy at King Edward Memorial and Princess Margaret Hospitals in March last year.
"These hospitals are leading the way in the fight against smoking and we will extend the smoking ban to all hospitals throughout the State," the Minister said.
A recent smoking survey conducted at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital found that only 8.5 per cent of staff who responded were smokers.
Three quarters of them admitted to smoking during working hours, but 41 per cent said they would like to stop the habit if there was a ban in place.
The hospital and QE11 MC Trust will be offering support to staff who want to quit smoking including:

• individual counselling sessions;
• on site sessions for the Cancer Council's 12-week quit program;
• subsidised nicotine patches for 12 weeks; and
• information on alternative therapies to help quitting.

The hospital will also target general practitioners and referring doctors to ensure smoking patients are informed that the hospital site is a smoke-free zone.
No smoking signs will be erected and security officers and other staff will be on standby to prevent people from contravening the ban.
Minister's office - 9422 3000