The Friarage Hospital is to go smoke free from the start of next month.
Patients, visitors and staff at the Friarage, James Cook, in Middlebrough, and community hospitals run by South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust will not be allowed to smoke on the sites.
But as part of the Trust’s smokefree pledge, hospital wards will all be providing nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) to smokers who have to stay in hospital overnight.
They will also be offering brief stop smoking advice and support to all patients attending for clinics and routine procedures, signposting those who want to quit to local stop smoking cessation services.
The trust is rebranding its main entrances with its Time to Clear the Air message, has trained up 60 smokefree champions, is providing on site stop smoking support for staff, has launched online smokefree training for staff and has created dedicated webpages at southtees.nhs.uk/about/smokefree.
Chief executive Siobhan McArdle said: “I am personally committed to ensuring all our hospital sites become smokefree from 1 April and that our patients, visitors and staff can walk through clear air as they come through our hospital entrances.
“As part of our smokefree NHS pledge we are making sure staff and patients are provided with the advice and tools they need to quit smoking, or at least abstain whilst on our hospital sites, and our smokefree security team will have an increased presence at our entrances.”
Clive Peedell, consultant clinical oncologist at South Tees, said: “We want every patient to have the very best outcome and the chances of a healthy recovery greatly improve with quitting smoking.
“By going smokefree, we aim to bring significant benefits for the health and wellbeing of everyone who uses our hospitals and services. A key part of this will be helping patients coming for a short stay in our hospitals to abstain from smoking.
“If you’re a patient, you have a lower risk of serious complications after operations if you don’t smoke. Quitting smoking helps people recover quicker from periods of illness or injury and have a lower risk of readmission.”
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