Ban smoking on all your grounds, hospitals urged: Patients face fines for breaking rules.

Hospitals are being urged to ban patients, relatives and staff from smoking anywhere on their grounds under new NHS guidelines.
Some trusts are already considering handing out fines to anyone who breaches the rules and threatening employees with the sack.
Guidelines from the health watchdog NICE today tell hospitals to outlaw smoking across their premises in car parks, gardens or in shelters just outside.

A woman lights up outside Chelsea and Westminster Hospital (file photo). Hospitals are being urged to ban smoking on their grounds, with patients facing fines if they break the rules

But opponents fear it will lead to hospitals employing wardens to patrol grounds and rigging up extra CCTV cameras to catch patients and staff flouting the ban.
There are also concerns that doctors and nurses are being coerced into nagging and bullying patients to give up smoking when they are busy enough trying to treat them.

Nurses and other staff would be banned from escorting patients outside to enjoy a cigarette (stock image)

The guidelines urge hospitals to ban patients from going outside for a cigarette at any point during their hospital stay even if they are in for several weeks.
Nurses and other staff will be forbidden from escorting patients outside to smoke and instead will be urged to offer them advice on quitting.
GPs, other doctors, nurses and midwives are also urged routinely to quiz patients about whether they smoke when they come to the hospital or surgery.
The guidance is not bound by law so it will be up to individual trusts to decide when to ban smoking and how strictly to enforce the rules.
But some, including Barts in London, are already considering imposing fines of £75 for patients,  relatives and staff as part of a zero-tolerance policy.
Consultants and senior nurses will be given the power to threaten to  discharge patients who ignore warnings to stop smoking, while security staff will patrol outdoor areas.
And Cambridge University Hospitals – where a ban will come into force on January 1 – is considering disciplining staff and implementing fines if the rules are not obeyed.
Professor Mike Kelly, director of the Centre for Public Health at NICE, said: ‘The idea behind this is not to create a penal culture but it is about a culture shift. It’s clearly absurd that the most lethal set of toxins to the human body are being passively encouraged in hospitals.
‘We’ve known since 1952 that smoking kills you and 61 years have passed and we’re now tackling the problem in hospitals. That’s too long.’
But Simon Clark, director of Forest which opposes smoking bans, said: ‘NHS staff have a duty of care to  protect people’s health but that doesn’t include the right to nag, cajole or bully smokers to quit.
‘It’s not only heartless and inhumane to ban patients from smoking outside hospitals and clinics, it’s almost impossible to enforce without installing CCTV cameras and employing wardens to monitor the grounds.’

Gone are the days when patients such as Speedway star Ronnie Moore (pictured in 1954 after suffering a broken leg) could enjoy a cigarette in their hospital bed

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