It was common place to walk the halls of a hospital 25 years ago and find physicians, nurses and even respiratory therapists smoking in the breakrooms, offices and hallways of hospitals. When I came on the scene in 1989, I was told the hospital I was working at had just transitioned to designated smoking areas for their employees. Patients could still smoke in their rooms, but employees had to go to only slightly out-of-the-way locations to light one up.
It wasn't until recently, (2007), that the private, not-for-profit I was working for went completely smoke-free. If you wanted to smoke, you had to go off campus. This was met with many "dag-nabbits" and other more elaborate expletives, as the smokers in our employment collectively became depressed at the notion of not being able to enjoy a puff while at work, or at least, a convenient puff, while at work.They would now have to walk about 300 yards to get off campus from the main building to enjoy their lovely addiction. In fact, they were also required to "punch-out" at the timeclock before going on their smoke break. Fortunately, our administration gave them a year in advance heads up before beginning to enforce the new policy. This policy also applied to the patients who could no longer ask the physician to write an order in their chart, allowing them to smoke in their rooms. They too, had to leave campus if they wanted to smoke.
Well, there is finally a study that looked at this sweeping policy among hospital facilities. The American Journal of Health Promotion has an article entitled "Influence of a tobacco-free hospital campus policy on smoking status of hospital employees". They wanted to evaluate the policy's affect on the employee's smoking behavior. Would it continue, would they quit? Nobody really knew what would happen. So, what did Ripley-Moffitt and others discover?
First of all, they offered an online questionnaire immediately prior to, 6 months after and then 1 year after the initiation of the campus smoke-free policy. There were just over 2000 respondents; 307 reported either current smoking or quitting within the past 6 months. Roughly 68% of the 307 agreed to follow-up surveys at 6 and 12 months post implementation. With every reporting time, came anywhere between 15% and 18.5% of the cohort reporting that they were not smoking. At least 48% of those who were not smoking stated they had been smoke-free for 6-12 months. All told, 60% or more of the newly smoke-free employees reported that the new nonsmoking policy was influential in their efforts to quit smoking.
They concluded then, that a smoke-free policy may increase employee quit attempts and then subsequent successful cessation. This was similar to my experience in 2007. Although many people were complaining and whining about the new policy, only the hard-core smokers would make their way to the campus gate to light up. Many just figured it was now too inconvenient to keep up the practice and then just quit or at least cut way down.
So for those who can foster this idea in their workplace or have the power to make this kind of decision, you should. Much like the smoking ban in restaurants, the results are hard to argue with. This kind of success has many outcomes. First of all, the employees are now healthier because they are not smoking as much and there is less secondhand smoke. Secondly, the employees will likely be more productive since they will be taking less smoking breaks. Third, the employees and employer may find a decrease in their health insurance premiums during enrollment, since they are, as a whole, at less risk for disease. No matter how much a smoker may complain about not having the "right" to smoke at work, they are sure to enjoy the benefits.
