RT Journal
A1 Schroeder SA
T1 Smoking among hospitalized patients: Another opportunity to improve patients' health: comment on “prevalence and predictors of smoking by inpatients during a hospital stay”
JF Archives of Internal Medicine
JO Archives of Internal Medicine
YR 2012
FD November 26
VO 172
IS 21
SP 1675
OP 1676
DO 10.1001/2013.jamainternmed.308
UL http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/2013.jamainternmed.308
AB 
Step by step it became more difficult for hospitalized smokers to smoke. Hospitals stopped selling cigarettes in their canteens (in the case of Veterans Affairs, this sparked an ongoing fight with the US Congress1). The Joint Commission mandated in 1992 that hospitals be smoke free; smoking rates among health care workers—even nurses—plummeted2; and medications for smoking cessation became widely available.3 An important loophole in the 1992 Joint Commission regulations was the exemption of psychiatric hospitals. However, recently they have begun to restrict smoking as well, even without a regulatory mandate to do so; between 2005 and 2011, the proportion of state mental hospitals that outlawed smoking inside the hospital increased from 20% to 79%.4