National No Smoking Day - local help

Date published: 11/03/2007

Staff at four Greater Manchester hospitals are supporting National No Smoking Day by doing everything from testing smokers’ carbon dioxide blood levels to swapping "fruit for fags".

Pennine Acute Trust runs Rochdale Infirmary, Bury’s Fairfield General Hospital, North Manchester General Hospital and The Royal Oldham Hospital. Events are being held at each hospital on Wednesday 14 March (as detailed below), with Rochdale’s on Thursday, 15 March. Hospital staff are involved in them all, with support from the local stop smoking services and other groups.

In addition, Marian Carroll, the Trust’s director of nursing, announced that from 1 April all inpatients who smoke will be offered the chance to access stop smoking services as an automatic part of their assessment process.

Ms Carroll said: "We are introducing a new nursing assessment document on 1 April, and that will include questions on whether patients who smoke want to access our local, free NHS stop smoking services, which have done such good jobs in helping thousands of residents to quit.

"All patients will now have the assurance that help is there if they wish it. Admission to hospital is a major issue for anyone, and it can be at these times that people wish to make a decision to stop smoking, but may be unsure of how to seek help. This will make it easy for them. The local stop smoking services already do a lot of work in our hospitals, and this is just another step to make it easier for patients to get the help they want.

"No Smoking Day is a fantastic event, and each year it encourages thousands of people to quit. We want to help ensure that the effort is year-round."

The No Smoking Day campaign group says that:

• People do give up - 20% of women and 28% of men are ex-smokers.  Surveys show that about 70% of current smokers would like to give up altogether. 
• Every year, around 114,000 smokers in the UK die as a result of their addiction.
• Smoking kills around six times more people in the UK than road traffic accidents (3,439), other accidents (8,579), poisoning and overdose (881), alcoholic liver disease (5,121), murder and manslaughter (513), suicide (4,066), and HIV infection (234) all put together (22,833 in total - 2002 figures). 
• Smoking causes thirty per cent of all cancer deaths (including at least 84% of lung cancer deaths), 17% of all heart disease deaths and at least 80% of deaths from bronchitis and emphysema. 
• Stopping smoking reduces this excess risk – stopping before age 35 can reduce a smoker’s health risks to the same as those of a life-long non-smoker. 

The events taking place at the hospitals are as follows:

• Wednesday, 14 March
  North Manchester General Hospital, Room 4, Outpatients A
  9.00 am – 4.00 pm
  Get your drive to quit off to a great start by swapping your cigarettes for fresh fruit - and pick up stop smoking tips.
  
• The Royal Oldham Hospital Main Entrance corridor
  10.00 am – 3.30 pm
  Respiratory nurses will be on hand to check your carbon monoxide levels, with members of the Breath Easy Group on hand to give advice.
  
• Fairfield General Hospital, Broad Oak suite foyer
  Have your carbon monoxide levels checked by nurses while getting advice on the best way to quit.
   
• Thursday, 15 March
  Rochdale Infirmary, atrium entrance
  9.30 pm – 3.30 pm
  Stop smoking advice – and environmental health staff will be available to advise on the new public smoke free rules. There will also be a display on smoke free homes in the ante-natal clinic.

The Trust are also stressing their smoke free message – since January 2006, no smoking has been allowed in either hospital buildings or grounds.

Ms Carroll said: "This has been a challenging policy to implement, but we are committed to seeing our work continue. We always said that the campaign would be as much about health promotion as it was about prohibiting smoking, and all of our publicity material includes the stop smoking services contact numbers. We know that people are choosing to use them to stop smoking, and gaining health benefits from doing so. It’s not easy to quit – but it’s well worth it."

Help from the free NHS stop smoking services are available on:

• Rochdale: 01706 708000
• Bury: 0845 2239001
• North Manchester: 0161 205 5998
• Oldham: 0161 621 5937