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Hospital To Kick The Tobacco Habit

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By Carl  Orth | The Suncoast News

Published: November 5, 2008

HUDSON - Many individuals often pledge to quit smoking as a New Year's resolution. But come Jan. 1, an entire hospital will make a New Year's resolution to ban smoking.

Regional Medical Center Bayonet Point in the Hudson area will break the tobacco habit entirely, indoors and outdoors, employees and patients.

"They won't be able to smoke anywhere on the campus," Kurt Conover, Regional's director of business development, said.

The designated smoking area in a screened-in porch near the cafeteria will be converted into a smoke-free break area.

Regional is following the lead of its sister HCA facility, Community Hospital of New Port Richey, which took the plunge Nov. 16, 2006, during the Great American Smoke-Out Day. It took nearly a year to prepare for the switch, Community spokeswoman Mary Sommise recalled.

"If anyone should be leading the charge, it should be hospitals," Conover commented.

"It's going to be challenging for them," Conover said about patients who smoke, or their visitors who get a tobacco craving.

"It's not an easy thing. I'm married to a smoker," Conover observed.

So Regional Medical Center is opening some of its free, quit-smoking classes to the public. The first of six Tuesday sessions started last night on Nov. 4 at the hospital's cafeteria conference room from 5:30 to 7 p.m. For information on the class call 813-929-1000, ext. 213.

Free patches have been given away as well to help people kick the habit.

Steve Rector, chief executive officer of Regional Medical Center, figures the hospital should help set a good example, as he indicated in an August letter to workers.

Pasco County residents still continue to smoke more than the statewide average, according to a Florida Department of Health survey in 2007. About three out of 10 Pasco residents smoked, while the statewide average declined to less than two out of 10 residents.

In Pasco high schools, the number of smokers has plunged by almost half since 2000, but the last survey in 2006 shows 18.8 percent of high school students still light up cigarettes.

"When economic times aren't the best, some people use it as a stress factor thing," Conover speculated. The incidence of lung cancer in women actually has been increasing of late.

Cigarette smoking remains the leading preventable cause of death in this country, Rector pointed out. It is responsible for one in every five American deaths. About 1,100 people die each day from smoking-related diseases. That doesn't even count the effects of secondhand smoke.

A smoke-free environment usually translates into reduced employee absenteeism and lower medical insurance costs, the Department of Health reports. Smokers are twice as likely to have accidents on the job. They are 50 percent more likely to be hospitalized.

"Please do not misinterpret the message; we are not asking individuals to stop smoking - we are asking individuals not to smoke or use tobacco on our campus," Rector wrote in his August message.

Since then the hospital had a Tobacco Free Fair and other events to help people who do want to give up smoking.

"Thank you for the positive changes you are making in countless peoples' lives," Rector said.

Carl Orth can be reached at 727-815-1068 or corth@suncoastnews.com.

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