When SDHB made a commitment to becoming a smokefree hospital in 2003, we were part of a small hospital based committee formed to lean and manage that process.

The major challenge was to win the hearts and minds of staff and get their support in many different ways. We felt if staff got behind the project the SDHB could become a leading example in our community of a health service that was committed to reducing the many harms from tobacco use.

Strategy:

Our stategy included - getting senior management buy in and support for key infrastructure changes like the "Systems First" method of identifying the smoking status of all patients - increasing staff skill and confidence - introducing systematic processes to support patients and staff who were not smokefree - offering cessation services for staff and inpatients

We will describe our future challenges of building linkages with Primary Health Organizations and continuing a close collaboration with public health services

Conclusion:

Our presentation will cover how we achieved this and also the wonderful result of staff smoking rates dropping each year since we have started from 21% in 2004 to 8.1% in 2006. We will also discuss how we are managing the 100% increase in referrals to the hospital cessation service as the “Systems First” referrals started to come through the system.