Smoke-free Campus Trend Growing

• 2/1/2010
• Author: Janet Pimentel
• Category: The Source Blog
• 15332 Views
• 0 Comments
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I don’t know if you heard, but a Joint Commission-accredited hospital in Chattanooga, Tennessee has decided to stop hiring workers who smoke. The hospital has been a smoke-free campus since around 2008, but hospital leaders decided to implement a smoker-free hiring policy beginning this month (February) because they think a hospital should set a healthy example for its community. The new rule won’t affect the hospital’s current employees who do smoke, but they will be offered smoking cessation help. Personally, I don’t smoke and never have, so I’m OK with a hospital putting some measures in place to make sure it truly is a smoke-free campus. I find it disappointing to have to walk through a crowd of smokers when I visit a sick friend/loved one in the hospital or if I go for my own doctor appointment. Perhaps I’d feel differently about this hiring policy if I worked at that specific hospital.

If anything, this hospital’s new policy shows me that the trend of smoke-free hospital campuses is truly growing. When The Joint Commission first introduced standards in 1992 requiring accredited hospitals to prohibit smoking (except in specific circumstances), only about 3% of U.S. hospitals at that time had a smoke-free policy. The number of U.S. hospitals with smoke-free campus policies has increased to slightly more than 45% by February 2008, according to statistics included in The Joint Commission study titled, “The Adoption of Smoke-Free Hospital Campuses in the United States.” Who knows what else hospital leaders will think of to reinforce their smoke-free campus? All I know is, if employers in other industries start implementing a weight hiring policy, then I’m going to be in trouble!

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