Cygnet are committed to delivering smoke free hospitals, as part of our drive to improve the health and wellness of our service users and staff. Smoking is the largest single preventable cause of morbidity, mortality and inequalities in health in Britain. People with mental health problems smoke significantly more than the population as a whole, with levels about three times those observed in the general population.
Our commitment is to support our hospitals to provide services in a smoke free environment, with smoke free buildings and grounds. All our hospitals will undertake a smoke free audit and develop individualised implementation plans and timescales tailored to individual service need.
“The strategy and work plan has been co –produced with service users and staff. We are seeing great results and feedback from Beckton, with lots of tools and practice to share across the group. We will be formally launching the strategy and sharing the great practice in March 2016.”Julie Kerry, Director of Nursing, Cygnet Health Care
In addition we will be supporting service users who want to give up smoking by providing access to smoking cessation groups, one-to-one sessions with a trained smoking cessation practitioner, as well as nictoine replacement therapy in the form of patches, lozenges and inhalators. Initial feedback from service users at Cygnet Hospital Beckton has been positive with many choosing to access nicotine replacement therapy. There have been no reported incidents of smoking on the hospital grounds since the service went smoke free at the beginning of November.