Let patients use e-cigs in hospital advise doctors

PATIENTS should be recommended e-cigarettes as a way to quit smoking and be allowed to use them at hospitals, doctors’ leaders say.

They are calling for patients to be routinely offered help in kicking the habit at GP appointments, outpatient clinics and when admitted to hospital.

The NHS’s failure to help smokers quit is as serious as not treating cancer patients, they added.

The recommendations have been drawn up by the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) which has accused the NHS of being ‘negligent’ in not doing enough to help smokers quit.

It is not yet clear whether the RCP believes patients should be allowed to use e-cigarettes in hospital communal areas or whether a special zone would be set aside.

The recommendations focus on doing more to help smokers keen to quit. Currently doctors may occasionally ask a patient whether they smoke but will not offer advice on how to give up.

The RCP, which represents 34,000 doctors, claims the vast majority of smokers want to quit but feel unable to do so.

The RCP’s report calls for patients to be routinely asked at any appointment or hospital visit whether they smoke and if they want help quitting.

If patients say yes, they should be offered nicotine patches, gum or pills – known as Champix or varenicline – as well as advice.

Doctors should also discuss e-cigarettes with patients, the report says, because although it is not the most effective method, not all patients will ‘like’ nicotine patches or gum. The report states: ‘Failure to identify and treat smokers is no less negligent than failure to identify and treat patients with cancer.

‘Systems failure is no less negligent in than individual failure. For the NHS, failure to treat tobacco dependency is unethical.’

Professor John Britton, lead editor of the report, said: ‘Treating the more than one million smokers who are admitted every year represents a unique opportunity for the NHS to improve patients’ lives, while also saving money.

‘For too long the NHS has failed to take responsibility for smoking, while prioritising other, less effective activity.

‘Smoking, the biggest avoidable cause of death and disability in the UK, is hiding in plain sight in our hospitals and other NHS services; the NHS must end the neglect of this huge opportunity to improve our nation’s health.’

Duncan Selbie, of Public Health England, said: ‘We fully support the Royal College in saying by far the majority of the NHS could be doing more to help smokers.’

About 16 per cent of adults are smokers, half of whom will lose an average of ten years of their life. Smoking is estimated to cost the NHS around £2.6billion a year in hospital admissions, GP appointments and at clinics.

Izzi Seccombe, of the Local Government Association’s community wellbeing board, said: ‘Councils remain committed to working with the NHS to help smokers quit. However, this is made all the more difficult by a £600million reduction to the public health budget by central government between 2016/17 and 2020/21.’

Simon Clark, of smokers’ group Forest, said: ‘Providing smoking cessation services to patients in hospital is at best a questionable use of public money.

‘Smokers contribute £12billion a year in tobacco-related taxes. That far exceeds the estimated cost to the NHS of smoking by patients and staff.’

The Scottish Government has set 2034 as a target date for reducing smoking prevalence to 5 per cent.

Scotland was the first part of the UK to ban smoking in all enclosed public spaces including pubs and restaurants in 2006.

Last week, it emerged that local authorities and housing associations could be encouraged to introduce ‘tobacco-free clauses in tenancy agreements’.