EVERETT – Patients can be discharged if they insist on smoking at Providence Everett Medical Center, part of a tough new smoking ban that goes into effect today.
Smoking is banned anywhere on the grounds of Snohomish County’s biggest hospital, including its parking garage. All smoking huts, some of which have existed for a decade, will be demolished, hospital officials said.
While employees and visitors will have to walk to the sidewalks or to nearby neighborhoods to light up, hospital patients won’t have that option.
They will be offered nicotine patches or other medications to help them with withdrawal symptoms while they’re hospitalized, hospital officials said.
But if patients insist on leaving the hospital to smoke, they will be classified as discharged against medical advice.
“If we had a policy with no consequence, it really wouldn’t be very meaningful,” said Janet Straus, an assistant administrator at the hospital.
“If you’re somebody with chest pain and we’re trying to rule out (a heart attack) and you say, ‘Hey wait a second, let me have a cigarette,’ that doesn’t make a lot of sense,” she said.
Leaving the hospital could jeopardize a patient’s medical care, Straus said, even for relatively short periods of time.
Although some hospitals ask smoking patients to sign medical waivers to go outside to smoke, if a patient had a medical problem while on a smoking break “quite honestly … I think it would be our responsibility,” Straus said.
The goal, however, “is to have a discussion with patients about not going out and smoking,” she said.
Signs have been posted in the hospital’s buildings on its Colby and Pacific campuses and on its grounds notifying patients, visitors and employees of the policy change.
Other hospitals are taking similar steps.
Cascade Valley Hospital in Arlington will adopt a nearly identical policy on July 4, said hospital administrator Clark Jones.
Swedish Medical Center in Seattle expects to adopt a policy next month allowing the hospital to discharge or transfer patients who insist on smoking.
The hospital feels that it needs some way to enforce its smoking ban, spokesman Ed Boyle said.
“We’re looking at (discharge) as a last resort,” he said. “We want to be able to work with them.”
Providence Everett Medical Center is the second hospital in Snohomish County to ban all smoking on its grounds.
Stevens Hospital in Edmonds was the first area hospital to adopt a campus-wide smoking ban. The ban went into effect in August. However, patients there aren’t being told they could be discharged for violating the smoking ban.
“We ask them to sign a waiver saying they know the risks involved and it’s an interruption in their care and that it’s not recommended,” said Sandy Brown, safety officer.
About one patient a month signs the wavier to be able to smoke, she said. “We also recommended that they have a friend or family member accompany them.”
Smoking bans on the property of hospitals and other health care businesses are becoming increasingly common throughout the Puget Sound region and nationally.
In King County, hospitals with smoke-free campuses include Northwest Hospital and Medical Center, Virginia Mason Hospital and Medical Center, Swedish Medical Center and MultiCare Health System, said Paul Zemann, who works in the tobacco prevention program for King County’s public health agency.
While hospitals that discharge patients who insist on smoking are still in the minority, the trend is gaining national momentum, even in the heart of tobacco country.
High Point Regional Health System in High Point, North Carolina, a town of less than 100,000 people, is among them, said Diane Reaves, spokeswoman. The policy is part of its smoking ban that went into effect in 2005.
Last week, smokers using one of the designated smoking areas at Providence Everett Medical Center expressed mixed opinions about the smoking ban.
Bob Erickson, from Phoenix, Ariz., said he was at the hospital visiting a family member.
He said he’s smoked for about 50 years. The hospital smoking ban “doesn’t motivate me to stop; it motivates me to adapt,” he said.
Some smokers go overboard in their reaction to smoking restrictions, he said, saying the bans infringe on their rights.
“You’re not looking at the whole picture,” Erickson said. “There’s a medical reason” for such bans. “It’s not a big deal, just go further away,” he said.
Diane Bartholomew of Lake Stevens sat on a bench in the hospital’s smoking hut. She said she strongly objects to the new policy. “It’s called respecting other people’s wishes,” she said.
Bartholomew said she tries hard to be considerate toward nonsmokers, walking outside her home when she smokes, and often putting a lozenge in her mouth after smoking when talking to a nonsmoker.
“We’re in a smoking area, away from other people,” she said. “We’re in America, we’re a free people aren’t we?”
Reporter Sharon Salyer: 425-339-3486 or salyer@heraldnet.com.
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