Hospitals plan tobacco-free launch

By: Jamie Durant/Morning News | SCNow
Published: December 31, 2007

Hospitals across the country have been gearing up to go tobacco-free during the past year, and Pee Dee hospitals are getting ready to join the fight.

McLeod Health and Carolinas Hospital System passed a resolution in July to work on a tobacco-free endeavor called the Breathe Free Initiative. They joined forces in August to announce the decision.

“They supported a commitment to a safe and healthy environment,” Teresa Anderson, vice president of support services at McLeod, said. “We realized that once they had adopted this resolution, it would take us about six months to (make it happen.)”

Anderson, the head of the Tobacco Free Policy Committee at the hospital, said people from different areas of McLeod were chosen to be on the panel in the effort to create a tobacco-free environment.

Christine Martin, an emergency registration clerk, said her recent bout with breast cancer wasn’t as much of a deterrent from smoking as she thought it would be, but once she realized she had the support of her employers, it made it much easier to quit.

Martin is using the smoking cessation classes offered at McLeod to aid her progress.

“The way that I took it was that it wasn’t really forcing you to quit, they were asking you to,” she said.

Dr. Kenneth Johnson, director of Carolinas Occupational Health, said the change might encourage people coming to the hospital to reconsider their tobacco habit.

“We know that smoking is associated with lung cancer, associated with emphysema and COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease),” he said. “We know that it’s one of the things that, if we cut back on smoking, we can save people’s lives.”

Beverly Shields, director of Critical Care at Carolinas, said the death of her sister from lung cancer, combined with her workplace going tobacco-free, was the kick she needed to get serious about quitting.

“There have been times when I thought about (smoking), and it was a fleeting thought, but what keeps me going is the thought that one cigarette could put me back to being a smoker,” she said.

Johnson said many people forget nicotine is a drug, and as such, there are methods that will help aid the process of quitting successfully.

“Nicotine is an addiction and a lot of people will relapse, that’s just part of the disease process,” Johnson said. “That’s not a failure. The overall idea is to quit smoking and keep trying. Eventually, one day you can beat this addiction.”

Hospitals plan tobacco-free launch

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