Out of the six gold award winners for this year’s global smoke-free healthcare services, five hospitals came from Taiwan, including Taiwan Adventist Hospital, St. Martin De Porres Hospital, Cathay General Hospital, Jianan Mental Hospital and Taiwan Landseed Hospital, while the other hospital was ICO Hospitalet in Spain. The six winners were presented in the ENSH GOLD Forum 2012 held on April 11th in Taipei.
It was the most difficult for mental health institutions to promote smoking cessation, yet Jianan Mental Hospital’s success stories have won experts’ attention over the world. Jianan Mental Hospital’s Vice Superintendent Tso-Ren Wang (王作仁) said, in addition to promoting education and cessation projects, the hospital contributed to environmental beautification and helped patients achieve the goal of smoking cessation faster as they created hand-made cessation symbols by art therapy. For example, the smoking rate of inpatients reduced from an average of 50% to 10%.
Dr. Wang said, successful smoking cessation not only benefits patients’ health but also helps the treatment, because smokers’ psychotropic drugs need to increase in volume, while some need to double. In addition, patients who have successfully quit smoking obviously gained confidence and better treatment outcome.
Senior researcher Tzung-Yee Feng (馮宗蟻) at Health Education Center in the Bureau of Health Promotion said, smoke-free hospitals which joined ENSH-Global Network for Tobacco Free Healthcare Services must commit to actively promote a “total” smoke-free environment, including conditions like rejecting tobacco companies’ sponsorship and not setting up smoking space, and cessation activities for patients and staffs ...etc.
For example, the chosen Cathay General Hospital, Taiwan Adventist Hospital and Landseed Hospital set reminding system in inpatient and outpatient computer systems so the healthcare staffs are especially attentive to smokers by actively offering cessation programs and cessation clinic information.