Kicking the Habit: Let Them Know Nurses Care

The Great American Smokeout is just around the corner. This year the event happens on Nov. 19.

The Great American Smokeout has been coming around annually on the third Thursday of November since 1976, but its origins date to 1971. That’s when a man in Massachusetts asked people to give up smoking for one day and donate the savings to a local high school. I’m not sure whether he was thinking more about raising money or getting people to quit smoking – or maybe it was both – but he wasn’t the only one with this idea.

That same year, a Minnesota newspaper editor created the first “D Day” (Don’t Smoke Day) and the idea began to spread. In 1976, the California chapter of the American Cancer Society encouraged people to stop smoking for a day. A year later, the society took the event nationwide.

Today, nearly everyone knows about the Great American Smokeout. It has become as much a part of our culture as smoking has become a cultural no-no. I never could’ve envisioned such a turnaround when I was growing up in the 1950s. Anyone who complained about having to breathe smoke-filled air 50 years ago was considered a pariah, a party pooper, a whiner.

When I entered nursing school, maybe 20 percent of the students smoked. When we graduated, more than half did. I can’t forget all those late nights in the dorm when we’d study together, play bridge or watch television in the lounge. Cigarettes were as integral to the scene as popcorn and soda pop. On any given night, you’d find a layer of smog in our living quarters. By today’s norms, it was appalling.

I can still smell the uniforms of the hospital nurses I worked with – all that white nylon and acetate reeking of foul odors after they returned to the floor following a few minutes in the break room. Our so-called break room was actually an oversized closet; get five or six nurses smoking in there and it was like entering a toxic soup.

Maybe even worse was the odor I remember when being cared for by a nurse who was a smoker. I can still smell her cigarette-tainted uniform as she bent over my body to turn me.

I know a lot of nurses and I can’t think of one who still smokes. Caring for patients with COPD made a lot of nurses quit. They didn’t want to be looking at their futures in their patients.

We all know that smoking costs society in many ways, but the actual numbers are pretty eye-popping. The Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids states that smokers cost the economy $97.6 billion a year in lost productivity. Even if it is half that amount, it’s enough to make you choke.

An additional $96.7 billion is spent on public and private health care due to tobacco use, and every American household spends $630 a year in federal and state taxes because of smoking.

According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, smoking causes about 440,000premature deaths in the United States and about $157 billion in health-related economic losses annually. This includes the more than 35,000 people who die due to second-hand smoke.

Additionally tragic are the babies who die every year because their mothers smoked during pregnancy: about 600 boys and 400 girls. How terribly sad is that?

Smoking is a powerful addiction and the addicted must want to quit. According to research, smokers are most successful in kicking the habit when they have support. It can be a nicotine patch, prescription meds, counseling, Web-based programs, guide books, support groups and encouragement of family and friends. Probably a combination of these is best.

What can nurses do?

If you know a smoker on a personal or professional basis who is considering quitting, give him or her all the support and encouragement you can. Let them know that you understand giving up smoking is one of the hardest things they’ll ever have to do and that you really care about their health and happiness.

I think when a nurse cares, it means a little more.