STAFF at Evesham Community Hospital are too scared to ask members of the public to stub out their cigarettes because of a fear of abuse, it was claimed this week.
Matron Sue Baker said nurses are too afraid to enforce no-smoking signs around the hospital which ban smoking in the hospital grounds as well as in buildings.
"We are following a government white paper on health which committed to a non-smoking NHS by the end of 2006," she explained. "We are asking people to give up smoking anywhere in the grounds.
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"We have signs up around the building and posters around the grounds but the problem is people just follow the signs to the department they need and might not know the details of our no-smoking policy."
Mrs Baker said although only a small number of people are smoking in hospital buildings, there are problems with people smoking on their approach to the hospital.
"We have people getting out of their cars and lighting up a last cigarette before they come in," she added. "They keep smoking right up to the doors and when staff ask them not to smoke they get all kinds of abuse.
"They use the f-word and anything else to hand and there have been cases of people approaching staff in an aggressive manner."
Mrs Baker revealed smoking staff were unhappy with the restrictions and a number of nurses had turned to anti-smoking measures offered by dedicated staff member Julia North.
But Neil Rafferty, a spokesman for smokers' rights group Forest, said the policy of banning smoking in the open air was drivel'.
"They make it up as they go along," he said, "hospitals have a duty to encourage healthy living but they are not there to tell us how to live our lives.
"They are incredibly stressful places - for staff as well as patients - and the most humane thing to do would be to at least have a smoking shelter."
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