re: Patients smoking outside the hospital

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Hospital staff said patients would constantly ask to be taken outside. Patients maintained that they didn’t want to go outside alone to smoke because they were afraid they would get sick while outside. Those that did risked getting frostbite. Guards told of patients who were “pushing this IV pole all the way down the sidewalk in the snow” after they were told they couldn’t smoke on hospital grounds. One wheelchair patient was locked outside on a winter night because he couldn’t see the sign saying the doors lock after certain hours. The sign, placed at eye level, was too high for him to see.

Another dangerous scenario documented by the researchers was of patients in isolation due to infection smoking outside, then tossing their used cigarette butts on the ground. The discarded butts could potentially spread disease if picked up and smoked by another person desperately wanting a smoke.

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