Smoking Still Kills…in So Many Ways
Seven million tobacco deaths per year.
Today, May 31, is World No Tobacco Day, declared by the World Health Organization (WHO) to bring attention to the health problems caused by smoking. According to the WHO fact sheet on tobacco,
“Tobacco kills more than 7 million people each year. More than 6 million of those deaths are the result of direct tobacco use while around 890,000 are the result of non-smokers being exposed to second-hand smoke.”
When nurses smoked at the nurses’ station.
It’s amazing to me how far we’ve come in a relatively short time in curbing smoking. When I first started working in hospitals, nurses would be smoking at the nurses’ station; shift report was often in a smoke-filled room; patients and visitors were allowed to smoke as long as there was no oxygen tank in the room. And I always hated sitting in the airline seat that was the dividing row from the smoking section—as if a small sign on the seat made a difference in keeping the smoke at bay!
Some resources.
This year, the focus is on smoking as a leading cause of cardiovascular disease—second only to hypertension. Here are some articles from AJN, plus resources that provide information about the mulitple negative […]