Peninsula Health Service Frankston Hospital is going
Smoke Free the right way by distributing Personal Ashtrays to patients, visitors and staff.
Peninsula Health is the major health care provider serving the metropolitan and rural areas on Victoria's Mornington Peninsula and comprises five locations across the Mornington Peninsula, one of Melbourne's fastest growing population corridors.
Frankston Hospital Emergency Department (ED) provides 24-hour emergency medical services to the local community. It is one of the busiest Emergency Departments in the State with around 50,000 patient attendances per year, and of those 30 per cent requiring inpatient care.
The E.D. is a purpose-built facility and includes a separate resuscitation area with capacity for frequent management of medical emergencies in adults and children, major trauma and other life-threatening emergencies.
The Department provides resuscitation, stabilisation and initial treatment for all emergencies. It is designated by the State Medical Displan as one prepared to send out teams of appropriately trained staff to a disaster site.
"The reality is that hospitals are a high stress environment - for patients, staff, and of course visitors." said Jack Jacobson, No BuTTs Managing Director.
"And that equates to high levels of smoking - and consequently, especially if Management chooses to ignore this important environmental issue, the inevitability of equally high levels of cigarette butt litter."
"As more hospitals and medical facilities every week go Smoke Free, their Management has two choices. They can either assist their smokers to be socially and environmentally responsible with their butts - or they can stick their head in the sand and try to act like their own smoker's butt littering is not their responsibility."
"That's not only really bad for the environment, it's also extremely damaging to their corporate image and profile because it's
their smokers who are littering - and everyone can see that for themselves."
"Management would never instruct their patients, staff and visitors to just go and just dump their trash and rubbish on their neighbouring properties."
"But if a location goes Smoke Free without assisting their smokers to do the right thing with their butts, wherever they go to smoke, then that's exactly what they are doing."
"No BuTTs receives over 50 emails and calls a week from concerned citizens from around the world objecting to the way their local hospital or medical facility or university, etc has gone Smoke-Free."
"And in every case, that essentially means that hospital management has simply told their smoking patients, staff and visitors to basically 'bugger off and go do it somewhere else' which is a disgraceful display of social and environmental indifference - because that's exactly what their smokers will do."
Amongst recent contacts is Nashville H2O in Tennessee USA - a 100% volunteer local citizen based environmental organisation "that proudly provides residents and corporations throughout Middle Tennessee with a platform to demonstrate their environmental dedication."
Nashville H2O members are understandably outraged by the complete apathy shown by Management of Tristar-Centennial Medical Campus to the tens of thousands of cigarette butts now being littered every month in the surrounds of their medical facility in Nashville since they went Smoke Free.
"Going 'Smoke-Free' doesn't mean that people are going to stop smoking, which appears to be an inconvenient truth for Tristar-Centennial Management that the good people at Nashville H2O are trying to get across to them." said Jack.
"Nashville H2O have actually produced a video that highlights problems that occur when any facility goes Smoke-Free the wrong way - and in Tristar-Centennial's case, it's a text book case study on what not to do, neither for the environment nor their corporate image."
"It's not only the obvious long term damage done to the local environment and waterways, it's also the ongoing damage done to that organisation's public profile when they're clearly responsible for all of that cigarette butt litter - because people can see what's happening."
"The good news is that more medical facilites every day are realising that their smokers affiliated cigarette butt litter can be easily and economically eliminated with
No BuTTs Personal Ashtrays for Medical Facilities."
"And over 75% of our medical facility based clients take the opportunity to also print a quit smoking message or link on their Personal Ashtrays."
"For a whole lot of reasons it's the right thing to do - and the solution is No BuTTs Personal Ashtrays."
Emergency Medicine at Peninsula Health is accredited by the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine (ACEM) for Advanced Vocational Training and for ACEM Paediatric training requirements. The department has formal academic affiliation with the Faculty of Medicine Nursing and Health Sciences, Monash University.
Over 500 hospitals and medical facilities are now going Smoke-Free the right way by providing their patients, staff and visitors with No BuTTs Personal Ashtrays that usually include a quit smoking message, or a website link or QR Code to quit smoking assistance.
For a free information and sample pack email info@nobutts.com.au
or call (+61-3) 9399-8133.