CALAIS – If you like to puff on cigarettes, get ready because soon you will not be allowed to smoke them or anything else on the grounds of Calais Regional Hospital.
The hospital’s board of directors recently voted to make the CRH campus tobacco-free, effective in July 2009.
In the past, staff, patients and visitors to the hospital could smoke in designated areas, but no more, hospital officials said Monday.
“Hospitals are a vital and central part of a healthy community and should share and model healthy behaviors for community members,” Deedee Travis, CRH’s director of community relations, customer service and development, said in a prepared release. “With smoking and breathing secondhand smoke being the leading causes of many illnesses, CRH has an obligation to the community to address this issue and ensure a healthy environment for our patients, visitors and health care providers.”
In recent years, Travis said, many hospitals across the nation have implemented smoke-free campuses to show a commitment to provide a place of wellness and prevention as well as treatment for patients, employees and visitors.
As soon as CRH implements this change, all hospitals in the Maine will have tobacco-free campuses.
“This change may be difficult for people who smoke, and our goal is to make resources available to assist all in abiding by this new policy,” she said. “A team will be assigned to coordinate all aspects of implementation. Ideally, a cross section of staff will serve on the team: clinical, nonclinical, smokers, nonsmokers, former smokers, etc.”
Hospital staff is asking for the community’s support in the tobacco-free initiative.
“The decision to go tobacco-free is not an attempt to ‘force’ anyone to quit smoking,” Travis said. “Rather, the tobacco-free initiative is a concrete way to demonstrate the hospital’s commitment to healthy living.”
Anyone with questions, concerns or suggestions may contact Travis at 454-9227.
bdncalais@verizon.net
454-8228
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