Only one in 10 hospitals in England enforces a smoking ban outside health service buildings, and Public Health England (PHE) wants all hospitals to offer help to quit as part of patients’ treatment.
Statistics show that more than a million smokers are admitted to NHS hospitals every year and, according to PHE, smoking causes 96,000 deaths a year in the UK. For each of those deaths, about 20 smokers are suffering from a smoking-related disease.
About 475,000 hospital admissions in England were attributable to smoking in 2014-15, and the annual cost is estimated at £2bn, with a further £1.1bn in social care costs.
A recent report by the British Thoracic Society said 25% of hospital patients were recorded as being ’current smokers’ – which is higher than rates in the general adult population (19%).
Other concerning figures in the report show that 50% of frontline healthcare staff in hospitals had not been offered training in smoking cessation while only one in 16 institutions completely enforced smoke-free grounds.
PHE chief executive Duncan Selbie said the plan was to give smokers who want to quit the right kind of support.
“This isn’t about forcing people. This is about helping people. And seven out of 10 say they want to quit.”
One way smokers can kick the habit is with clinical hypnotherapy and smoking cessation is one of the success stories of hypnotherapy, says the National Council for Hypnotherapy, which has more than 1,800 highly-trained therapists across the UK.
Smoking is a habit or unwanted behaviour, says the NCH, which can be removed through hypnotherapy.
“This is something you feel you have no control over which affects your life and the lives of those you care about. Habits such as overeating or smoking are the most common, but there are many other behaviours that affect people’s lives, make them unhappy or cause a risk to their health and the health of those around them.”
Smokers who want to quit will be helped, through hypnosis, to understand their motivation for giving up and this will help them quit. The NCH says that a physical addiction to cigarettes can be over after just one week while research shows that by quitting smoking with hypnosis a person ise three times more likely to give up than if nicotine patches were used.
With smoking cessation being such a success through hypnotherapy, it is worth contacting an NCH therapist near you and changing your life. Simply click here and enter your postcode when directed to do so. It is that easy.
As PHE’s Mr Selbie says: “We know if you get that help, you are four times more likely to quit forever.”