You can hold it. Just don’t light it up on hospital property.
The last refuge of the workday smoker — the sidewalk of shame, where the nicotine-addicted get their fixes under the baleful watch of passersby — is about to vanish at Red Bank’s largest employer, Riverview Medical Center.
Riverview’s parent, Meridian Health, has decreed that as of November 20 — the date of the American Cancer Society’s Great American Smokeout — it will no longer allow anyone to smoke anywhere on any of its properties. They include Jersey Shore Medical Center in Neptune and Ocean Medical Center in Brick Township.
The ban applies to patients, visitors and employees, who could be fired for repeated offenses, such as smoking in cars parked on hospital properties, admits Wendy Edelson, Meridian’s head of human resources. But she says a four-step disciplinary process and programs to help wean smokers off the weed should make terminations rare in the 8,500-employee system.
The hospital started educating workers and offering stepped-up efforts to help smokers quit a year ago, Edelson says, and “you’d be surprised how many people have taken us up on this.”
Only for another month, though.
The ban is part of a broadening national trend. Southern Ocean County Hospital in Manahawkin already bars smoking on its properties, and big health facilities across the country are adopting the same stance. College campuses, too; USAToday reported last week that 140 in America have banned smoking, triple the number of just 18 months ago. Seton Hall University appears to be moving toward a ban, according to a report in the campus newspaper.
Meridian officials say they’re not trying to interfere with a smoker’s rights. They’re just taking control of an environment that is, after all, dedicated to human health.
“We’re just saying, ‘not on our property,’” says Edelson. “We decided we were going to take this on to benefit everybody, especially our team” of employees.
Among them: the workers who get stuck picking up the slack while smokers are outside getting their fresh air. “You know that break time is extended” when someone has to leave the building to smoke, Edelson says, putting the issue squarely in the productivity category.
Will the ban push the last remaining smokers out onto the sidewalks of East Front Street or Wharf Avenue? Officials contend that state law permits any property owner that maintains a sidewalk and adjoining property to ban smoking.
Riverview’s policy also means that not even the demolition contractors hired to tear down the former Worden-Hoidal Funeral Home on East Front Street, which the hospital bought this summer, will be allowed to smoke on the site.
The ban applies to all tobacco products, including cigars, chewing tobacco, snuff and pipe smoking, and extends even to cars leased by the hospital.
I love this. Not only do smokers' coworkers "get stuck picking up the slack" for smokers who are out wasting their employers' time, but they also get stuck picking up the TAB for higher group insurance premiums, since it is a proven fact that smokers get sick more often and are generally less healthy than their non-smoking coworkers. Go, Meridian, go!
Good decision.
It has always baffled me how a hospital can allow people to smoke on its property. Local office complexes are moving towards a smoke free campus too.
To those who will claim this is infringing upon rights…I believe that the right to clean air is superior to the right to a nicotine fix. This isn't about liberals taking away freedoms; it is about people taking a stand against a habit that costs everyone else more time, money, and cleanliness.
As smokers are forced outside and, now, off property, cigarette litter will increase. Check out this web site…
http://preventcigarettelitter.org/index.html
As smokers are forced outside and , now, off property, cigarette litter will increase. Check out this web site…
http://preventcigarettelitter.org/index.html
Nice try … but it is the neighborhood around Riverview that will suffer more with the cigarette butts and extra garbage that will be tossed by workers and visitors alike. Already, the Riverview properties are general eyesores with little concern around outside maintenance and general cleanliness. So what do you say, Riverview Executive Leadership …. are you willing to step up and be a good neighbor and not use this as a false public relations ploy?
Will they have a special cigarette patrol to circle the parking lot? If so, will they be armed with tazers in case a smoker tries to flee the scene? Will the deny service to patients caught puffing in the bushes or just amputate their hand? Will the hospital have access to chain gang that they can use to clean up the butts just off of the property? What is the rule about smoking in your car, but on the property? What if you take a drag on the sidewalk but exhale on the property? What if an ER doctor steps out for a cig and gets caught? Will they fire him even if he saves more live than any other doctor they have?
What baffles me even MORE than smoking (I am a smoker) is how a hospital can employ so many morbidly obese people to work in their "Health Facility". I say if you ban smoking than you should also ban the morbidly obese from being there as well. Funny - I think they'd be down to maybe 1 nurse at that point.
HEHE - I have been for procedures at this hospital and you are right! I did not see one nurse who even remotely resembled "fit". I actually don't think I saw many that were anything less than 100 pounds overweight. And they make smoking an issue?! Wow - maybe they oughta try free salads regularly for the workers! I don't know - I think I'd rather have a skinny smoker assisting me in the hospital than someone who is so grossly overweight they can barely stand let alone help me in an emergency! What a joke!
These "overweight" nurses some of you have a problem with, have probably saved more lives combined then you ever will. They also have surely cared for some of your sick or dying loved ones with great compassion, and maybe YOU some day!
You make me ill.
Funny how people turn this into a discussion about fat nurses. When the reality is when you need a nurse or your family needs one… you love them more than anything. Who cares what they look like? As long as they take good care of us.
Smoking is gross and unhealthy to those who are AROUND it… therefore banning it from hospital property is wonderful and well overdue.
Hospital neighbor - sounds like you need to complain… the elections are coming up so you should be busy.
Stop it with the litter… if the town wants to crack down they can do it and should.
I would save my remarks about overweight hospital employees until you actually have the occasion to receive care there. I had outpatient surgery at Riverview last year and was cared for by no fewer than 20 individuals, including the surgeon, anesthesiologist, and a small army of nurses and surgical assistants. Aside from my mother taking care of me as a child, I have never felt more cared for or in better hands. Everyone had a terrific attitude, even the three nurses who struggled to pry out my navel jewelry without the proper tools (as I had forgotten to remove it prior to surgery). Hats off to everyone at Meridian…and I hope you can all quit smoking!!