Coffee going smoke-free

ELIZA COFFEE MEMORIAL HOSPITAL - Smokers in the Shoals will have one less place to light up Monday.

Officials at Coffee Health Group decided each of its hospital campuses as well as its two medical office buildings will be smoke-free starting Monday. Employees at the facilities will have a designated smoking area until Jan. 1, at which time it will be off limits, too.

The policy will affect Eliza Coffee Memorial Hospital, ECM East and Collins Medical Building, all in Florence, as well as Shoals Hospital and its medical office building in Muscle Shoals.

Tom Whetstone, Coffee spokesman, said the goal is to set an example of better health for the community.

"Since we are the largest health care provider in the area, we felt that now is the time to make the move," he said. "It's something we need to do, and we don't plan on going back."

It's not the first time Coffee has attempted to ban smoking from the premises.

An attempt was made in the 1990s when the Joint Commission, the hospital's accrediting organization, required all health care facilities to ban smoking indoors.

"At that time, we made an effort to take it a step further and go campuswide, but it was not successful," Whetstone said.

When Florence adopted a smoking ordinance that bans smoking in all public places in September, administrators at Coffee decided it was time to go smoke-free, he said.

Patients who will have procedures Monday and in the days after have been notified of the change, he said. Additional security will be ready to enforce the policy.

"We've got signage that will be around each of the campuses, and we will also be offering smoking cessation classes as a way to help those who want to quit," Whetstone said, adding that some health care consumers and their families have complained about the cigarette smoke that lingers around the main entrances to the facilities.

Karen Ritter, a longtime smoker and director of risk management at ECM, is among those who will need the support a smoking-cessation class will offer as she tries to break her cigarette habit before Jan. 1.

"I've quit once before, for 12 years," she said. "But when I first started back, I was smoking one or two here and there. Then the habit increased until I got the morning cough and food didn't taste as good as it used to. I've heard women say they don't want to quit because they will gain weight, and it's true they might, because they trade smoking for eating. So I'll have to increase my other activities, and I've got to learn to make healthy choices.

"If I can go four, six or 10 hours a day, that's a little closer to my goal of quitting, and it makes things that much easier," she said.

Other employees, including Mary Lynn Jackson, will help organize the smoking-cessation classes. As a respiratory therapist, she said, she sees first-hand the damage cigarette smoking can do to the body.

"People think cigarette smoke and lung cancer, but the reality is that heart disease is the No. 1 killer, although lung cancer is right up there," she said. "People also develop chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder, which is a progressive disease. Once you have it, COPD can't be reversed."

Having worked at Coffee for more than 30 years, Jackson said, she remembers when smoke clouded the air inside the facility and doctors walked the halls with a lit cigarette in hand.

"I've always thought we should be smoke-free, that we should be setting the example and promote health," she said.

Michelle Rupe Eubanks can be reached at 740-5745 or michelle.eubanks@TimesDaily.com.