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 health effects of tobacco and about smoking cessation programs.
From AJN
Original Research: The Experiences of Pregnant Smokers and Their Providers
This CE article from last June examined the experiences and attitudes of pregnant smokers and their health care providers, and offers some insight for designing smoking cessation programs for this group.
Presurgical Tobacco Cessation Counseling
This Viewpoint from March 2016 urges nurses who do preoperative counseling to seize the opportunity to include information about not smoking in their patient surgical teaching.
From WHO
The 2018 World No Tobacco Day campaign materials, including brochures and posters in several languages with the public health message, “Tobacco breaks hearts.”
From the CDC
The CDC maintains an Office on Smoking and Health. The comprehensive site houses an array of information, including state-level data, information for health care providers, consumer materials, media messaging resources, and links to global tobacco control resources.
Another indication was that when smoking in airliners was banned, the maintenance people complained that they could no longer easily identify air-leaking cracks in the fuselage or leaks around gaskets by the brown nicotine streaks. Yuchh.