Smoking has several severe organic consequences. On the other hand, one has the general impression that it improves patients' anxiety during a hospital stay, and that ceasing smoking in this moment will cause them to get very aggressive and unstable. I run a psychosis/bipolar disorder ward where there was a huge smoking problem. Cigarettes became a currency in the hospital, and patients smoked a lot. We suddenly determined that no cigarette should come into the ward, and that nicotine patches should be distributed for those who wanted. Number of fights between patients diminished to a great extent (since there was no more "cigarette gambling"), and patients could be discharged much more sooner. I feel, therefore, that banning smoking during hospitalization has great benefits, also because smoking increases psychotropic drug metabolism. Some of these patients, stimulated by our non-smoke ward program, did not relapse in smoking after discharge.

It is a proven factor that, smoking is responsible for many diseases as it contains large numbers of carcinogenic substances. It also affects drug metabolism of a patient under medication.

More ever as Alexndre mentioned it has broad social and environmental effect on overall health.

So i believe banning of smoking is more cost effective than allowing to smoke during hospitalization and steps must be taken to initiate tobacco cessation counselling session.

The initiation of tobacco cessation counselling session sounds very good but how obtainable can it be because of the social acceptance of smoking, some people may feel it is not a problem and even alcoholic groups may not be doing well in that aspect which i can't say for sure . Thanks for your response.

It is well documented that smoking is a risk factor for many diseases. When we talk of smoking, we usually forget passive smoking. However, researches showed that passive smoking is a significant problem globally. Because of this smoking is forbidden in many public areas. Thus, I believe that since hospitals host a huge number of patients and can be considered as public areas, smoking should be forbidden for hospitalized patients or there should be a special area where it would be possible to smoke.

It is known that smoking is a risk factor of many diseases and will make problems for patients whom are in closed area in hospitals. I think the administrators should prevent smoking.

Thank you all for your response so far. There are some issues that one need to be aggressive about, such as smoking because of its degradating factor on the user and his or her environment. However, looking at it from another point if view , quality of life may not neccessarily be defined as not smoking or drinking but some people in their end of life care may wish to do that which they love most to the fulllest before passing away. Depriving them of such may lead to resilience and depression at their terminal stage and sometimes this questions can't really be answered . Are there any literatures on smoking that someone can forward to me please.....

There are a myriad of sound policy reasons for strictly prohibiting smoking, not just by inpatients, but on the entirety of the hospital campus.

22 years ago, the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) banned smoking inside US hospitals. This prevented patients from further harming their own health, protected employees from tobacco smoke exposure risks, and reduced the risk of fire, particularly in the oxygen-enriched medical setting. It also contributed to reduced smoking rates by hospital staff (Longo, JAMA, 1996).

There is no valid medical argument to allow smoking in hospitals and, in situations where special populations are deeply nicotine dependent, much safer sources of nicotine can be made available.

in the event of Nicotine Replacement Therapies and community nursing interventions which i believe if thoroughly implemented can further help the population, because not only is smoking harmful to the person , it is as well detrimental to neighbors and the society at large. Not much research has been done to effect this steps and i think the more we talk about it, the better the attention it will receive. if you have got any recent literature on smoking cessation kindly inbox me the info. thanks

Smoking is very dangerous for health.

Nobody should not be allowed to smoke, neither in hospital nor in out of the hospital.