Hospital bans tobacco.

Byline: Tim Christie The Register-Guard

CORRECTION (ran 11/16/2006): PeaceHealth's new tobacco-free policy at Sacred Heart Medical Center and other facilities takes effect today,Thursday, Nov. 16, and smoking shelters were removed from the hospital campus Wednesday. A story on page E1 Tuesday incorrectly reported when those events were to occur.

No ifs, ands or butts about it - tobacco is on its way out at Sacred Heart Medical Center and other PeaceHealth facilities.

Today, the hospital is tearing out two "butt huts" - converted LTD shelters on campus where smokers can huddle out of the weather - and, starting Wednesday, smoking and chewing will be banned from PeaceHealth's hospitals and medical clinics.

Patients, visitors and employees who feel the nicotine urge will have to leave hospital premises and light up, or take a dip, on a public sidewalk.

"We're trying to create a culture of health," said Barb Kessler, PeaceHealth's director of clinical nursing support.

What's clear is that smoking is bad for health. The U.S. Surgeon General reported in June that about 126 million Americans are regularly exposed to secondhand smoke in their homes and workplaces, and that no level of secondhand smoke exposure is safe. The American Cancer Society says tobacco will cause about 30 percent of the 564,830 cancer deaths expected to occur this year.

PeaceHealth is joining a growing number of hospital and health systems that have gone tobacco free in recent years. The American Hospital Association doesn't keep track of numbers, spokesman David Allen said, but "anecdotally it's certainly a trend we're seeing as hospitals are responding to the health needs of the communities they serve."

The American Nonsmokers Rights Foundations lists more than 400 hospitals and clinics nationwide that have adopted smoke-free campus policies, including four in Oregon.

PeaceHealth's policy, timed to coincide with the American Cancer Society's 30th Great American Smokeout, has been in the works since July 2005, when system CEO Alan Yordy announced that all new PeaceHealth facilities and the RiverBend medical center would be tobacco free, said Susan Pfanner, a respiratory therapist at Sacred Heart who is helping employees quit the habit.

PeaceHealth is offering its tobacco-cessation classes to employees for $25, instead of the usual $45, and that fee will be returned if an employee stays tobacco free for 12 months, Pfanner said. Employees with benefits can get nicotine replacement therapy, such as nicotine gum or the patch, at cost.

It's not yet known how employees will react to the new policy. But a survey taken a year ago found that 84 percent of respondents said they'd be willing to stop smoking or chewing during work hours, Pfanner said.

"I think it's going to be easier than we think," she said. "There may be some push back initially but I think once people recognize the health care purpose behind it, it makes sense."

As a profession, about 15 percent of registered nurses and 28 percent of licensed practical nurses smoke, according to Tobacco Free Nurses, a group dedicated to helping nurses quit.

Smokers contacted Monday at Sacred Heart, many who would not speak on the record, had mixed responses. Some were clearly unhappy and said it would be hardship, particularly for patients and their families. Others said they would seize the policy as an opportunity to finally kick the habit.

Gerald Jensen, a 62-year-old chaplain at Sacred Heart, has been smoking since he was in the Navy in the 1960s. On Monday, he was puffing a Marlboro at the smoking shelter at 11th and Alder on his break.

"I don't have any problem with the policy at all," he said. "I understand it."

But he's concerned that it will be difficult for patients who smoke.

"What are patients supposed to do? Go down the street in their gowns? It doesn't seem fair to me," he said.

Jensen couldn't help but marvel at how times have changed. He was briefly a patient at Sacred Heart in the late 1960s, and remembers patients smoking in their beds and doctors smoking in patients' rooms.

"It's too bad about the social stigma attached to it, especially when you agree with it and go out of your way (not to smoke around nonsmokers) and they tend to crucify you anyway," he said. "Everybody has bad habits."

Housekeeper Kim Yucka, taking a smoke break at the shelter outside the emergency department at 13th Avenue and Hilyard Street, said she's all for the new policy

"It might help me quit," she said. "It's going to be hard."

Likewise, J.D. Machado of Marysville, Calif., visiting his mother-in-law, said the policy is a good idea.

"It's bad for your health," he said. "I wish I never started."

But Angela Byers of Coos Bay, awaiting treatment for a foot injury in the ER, doesn't like the idea of a smoking ban.

"I think that's not right," she said. "It's really inconvenient for people who are hurt. ... For patients who just gave birth, why should they have to go across the street to smoke?"