NHS hospitals must help patients quit smoking, says British Thoracic Society

NHS hospitals around the United Kingdom are not meeting national standards on helping patients to quit smoking and are not enforcing smoke-free premises, a report by the British Thoracic Society has found.1

For the report, smoking cessation and smoke-free policies and practices at 146 hospitals around the UK were reviewed from April to May 2016, including the records of 14 750 patients treated at the hospitals.

More than a quarter (27%) of hospital patients were not even asked whether they smoked, the report found. Of those that did smoke, 72% were not asked …