By Teri Carnicelli

    Beginning this month, if you want to light up at Banner Good Samaritan Medical Center, you have to walk away. Far away.

    That’s because as of Jan. 1, the entire hospital campus located at 1111 E. McDowell Road went tobacco-free. No more designated smoking areas outside, whether for patients, staff or visitors. If you want to smoke or chew tobacco, you have to take a stroll first.

    To ease the staff into the transition, an information table has been set up for months outside the hospital’s Grace Middlebrook Family Learning Center, on the ground floor of the hospital. Patients and visitors also were welcome to stop by and pick up an enrollment form for the Arizona Smokers Helpline, also known as the ASHLine. The helpline, funded by the state, offers referrals to professional counselors as well as a free two-week supply of nicotine gum, patches or lozenges, and information on different ways to quit. That program has been extended until mid-January at the hospital campus.

 

“If employees want to smoke they must leave the Banner campus to do so,” explains Kelli Shepard, interim director of Patient Relations for Banner Good Sam. “In order to leave campus during scheduled work hours a non-exempt employee must clock out and clock back in with their supervisor’s approval.”

    Shepard added that if an employee who is violating the policy is noticed, they will be reminded of the policy and given coaching by their managers.  Employees who continue to violate the tobacco-free policy consistently will be written up and dealt with through the same procedures as if they had violated any other hospital policy.

    Patients are notified at registration that the new tobacco-free policy is a condition of admission and this is reviewed again with their nurse during assessment.

    “If a patient believes they will have trouble abiding by this policy they are encouraged to speak with their physician about nicotine replacement therapy while he or she is a patient in the hospital,” Shepard says. “Nicotine patches and gum also will be available in the gift shop for employees and visitors as well.”

    This is not the first medical facility in the state to go tobacco-free, nor does it look like it will be the last.

    Arizona State Hospital, the state’s only publicly owned and operated psychiatric hospital, in July of 2008 became a tobacco-free environment. It is located at 24th and Van Buren streets.

    “While approximately 23 percent of the general population smokes, the prevalence is three times higher in persons with other addictions or mental illness,” said John Cooper, Arizona State Hospital CEO.

    The state hospital provided tobacco dependence treatment programs to help staff and patients kick the habit. The hospital also made treating nicotine addiction an integral component of clinical assessment, treatment planning and clinical interventions.

    Cooper met with the leadership at Banner shortly before the new policy was implemented to share his experiences more than a year in to being a tobacco-free facility.

    “A lot of our patients have stopped smoking and feel so much better,” he says. “They are making better dietary choices, their exercise level is increasing, and they have more time for therapy because they are not frequently leaving to smoke. There are just so many health benefits to keeping a person away from using tobacco.”

    It’s a message that is making its way around other medical facilities in the North Central corridor as well. While all of them abide by the state law that prohibits any smoking inside a public building, many have been providing designated smoking areas outside, at a respectable distance from entrances and exits. However, that may be changing in the future.

    The Medical Executive Committees of both John C. Lincoln hospitals have unanimously endorsed a plan to develop a tobacco-free policy that will affect all of the Network’s facilities, its two hospitals—including North Mountain in Sunnyslope—physician practices, and community services programs.

    A task force of co-workers, made up of people who use tobacco and those who don’t, will develop a plan for a tobacco-free policy that is expected to go into effect at some point during 2010. When the plan has been developed and is communicated, several months of advance notice will be given to everyone before the new policy goes into effect.

    “This is an important effort for John C.,” said President and CEO Rhonda Forsyth. “We are committed to providing quality care and a healing environment for the people we care for. We know that patients who use tobacco products do not recover as quickly as those who don’t.

    “In addition,” she says, “it’s important that we limit the effect of secondhand smoke in all of our locations.”

    Abrazo Health Care is the umbrella company that oversees several hospitals in the Valley including Phoenix Baptist Hospital at 20th Avenue and Bethany Home Road, and Paradise Valley Hospital at 40th Street and Bell Road.

    PV Hospital became a tobacco-free campus more than two years ago, however, many of Abrazo’s other facilities, including Phoenix Baptist, still offer outside designated smoking areas.

    “It’s definitely something we’re considering for our other hospitals,” says Lisa Levi, marketing director for Abrazo. “It just makes sense.”