Posted on 12/15/2010 3:17:53 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
If you smoke or use tobacco products — even in the privacy of your own home — you need not apply for a job at two Central Florida hospitals.
Florida Hospital Waterman in Tavares and Florida Hospital Fish Memorial in Orange City will no longer hire smokers starting Jan. 1 — the first in the Florida Hospital system to enact such a policy. The hospitals will join a number of health-care facilities nationwide recently creating policies to screen out job applicants who light up.
"As a leading health-care provider in our community, we believe it important for all of our employees to model healthy behaviors," Waterman's president, Ken Mattison, said in a statement. He added that the policy is a natural progression for the hospital, which stopped allowing people to smoke on hospital grounds in 2007.
The new rule will not affect existing employees at both hospitals — they can continue to smoke off-campus, officials say, although they will be encouraged to quit through smoking-cessation programs.
(Excerpt) Read more at orlandosentinel.com ...
How are they going to enforce it? Oh, right, drug testing. Tried, true, and approved by the Courts for 30 years. Nice.
The slippery slope. I believe in being a fanatic and not giving an inch to the other side, because any inch which you give away, you never get back, and you've set a precedent for giving away some of what you want. That never turns out well for people who value freedom.
Let me guess, the Trustees are lawyers? This one has equal protection lawsuits written all over it and lots of new customers for the Trustees friends.
If they are private businesses, then their employment policies should be their own.
I don’t like government coming in and telling restaurants or bars whether or not they allow smoking or not. If I was to take any other position with these private enterprises, I’d be inconsistent.
Heathcare workers as a group are rather obese, in my observation.
Good for them!
I try not to hire smokers either. They are sick all the time and take too many damn breaks.
I’m in agreement. If you wanted to have all non-drinkers at a whiskey distillery...then you should have that right. The problem I would see is that you might have to offer a higher pay situation to keep and maintain this non-smoker force. Once you start to become picky...things tend to cost more.
You also have to add in this factor...smokers tend to require two smokes in the morning and if you only have one accepted area to smoke....you can figure a twenty-minute walk total...with the five minutes of smoking. So you could cut out this unnecessary time issue. At my last job....there was one place for four buildings that smokers could take a smoke. By the time you tangled with security exiting and re-entering the building, you wasted sixteen minutes on each trip. It would have been better to have a rooftop point and just spend three minutes on the roof smoking and then return to your module cube.
<< Heathcare workers as a group are rather obese, in my observation. >>
What’s a “heathcare” worker? Oh, you mean “healthcare” worker, don’t you?
I work in health care. I work in a department of around 30 people or so, and not one of them — not ONE — is obese.
Only two or three of the thirty smoke, far below the 25 percent of Americans who do; at least three-quarters of us go to the gym regularly. Further, I can almost guarantee you that most of us — on the whole — are healthier (or is that heathier?) than the population, at large, including yourself, perhaps.
Silly comment on your part.
Are they going to make mandatory BMI for the fat @ss LPN’s and Nurses too? Would seem to me that’s more of a health issue than smoking. How many cigs can you smoke on a 10 hour shift vs. how many donuts can you sneak between meals!
Oh my, I committed the unforgivable sin of a typographical error. Such a juvenile initial line of attack.
After that, I should have known better than to read further, and unsurprisingly, you’re being more than just a tad defensive.
The schlubs I see gallumphing and shuffling down the halls of hospitals and out in the world at large tend toward the larger end of the scale. That is the truth. Those cutesy cartoon-bedecked uniforms only exacerbate the unfortunate visual.
Your offense does not negate my observation.
Here, have a Twinkie, noob.
On 9/11 there were almost survivors from the companies on the top floors of the first building that got hit at the World Trade Center. The CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald survived because he was late for work that morning due to some kind of prior commitment (maybe a dental appointment).
I also seem to remember reading about another person (or two) who survived because they went down to take a smoke break, and they were outside at ground level when the plane hit the building.
In some cases, smoking ain't so bad for your health after all.
I was going to say, “But obese nurses, some morbidly obese, are just fine”, but you beat me to it.
Healthy Children - Powered by pediatricians. Trusted by parents
[Excerpt] Advice to parents
The best way to keep your children safe from injury or death from guns is to NEVER have a gun in the home.
Do not purchase a gun, especially a handgun.
Remove all guns present in the home.
Talk to your children about the dangers of guns, and tell them to stay away from guns.
Find out if there are guns in the homes where your children play. If so, talk to the adults in the house about the dangers of guns to their families.
For those who know of the dangers of guns but still keep a gun in the home. [End Excerpt]
Last Updated 6/10/2010
Source: TIPP-The Injury Prevention Program (Copyright © 1994 American Academy of Pediatrics)
---------
(TIPP? As in Tipper Gore?)
[snip]
Even talk radio can be distracting at times, especially when you’re listening to a complete idiot who doesn’t know what he or she is talking about. That can really make the blood boil, which in turn affects focus and coordination. Dr. Laura alone — p’lease! her doctorate is in physiology, not psychology! — has undoubtedly caused hundreds, or perhaps even thousands, of needless injuries and deaths. The solution: a Tipper-Gore-style rating system for radio programming, with PD (Potentially Disturbing) talk-show hosts automatically muted.
Now this may sound like a joke, but it’s deadly serious: we’re all rightfully disgusted by drunk drivers, but Ronald McDonald probably causes more highway mishaps each year than Jack Daniel. The drive-thru restaurants in particular have introduced a host of truly heinous threats to highway safety, all of which should be banned from moving vehicles: hamburgers requiring more than one hand to hold (especially in vehicles with manual transmissions), fries so greasy you can barely grip the steering wheel, and super-sized Cokes that won’t fit in the cup holders so you have to put them between your legs and try not to squeeze. And talk about hot coffee! Every year, thousands of innocent Americans lose their lives on our nation’s roads because of gluttony, pure and simple. [End Excerpt
Bump!
Well, I agree with that. The question becomes: In today's world, how private is the healthcare industry? Who is really calling the shots? Lots of government money. Lots of government regulation. In a fascist system, when the company won't hire smokers, it may just be doing the bidding of the politicians.
“Heathcare workers as a group are rather obese, in my observation.”
I don’t know about obese, but they are definitely overweight.
After reading the article, I think you are right.
this is *only* a tactic in the strategy of increasing
totalitarianism.
I must admit my first reaction was “good. no more
clandestine smoking by the nursing staff.” (which I
had noticed in my modest association, years ago, with
medical facilities)
The fact that they disqualify all those with traces
of nicotine may be medically incompetent, but I must
defer with those with expertise in that area (legitimate
medical uses of nicotine)
I wonder if, a hundred years ago approximately, smokers
were barred from hospital employment? I have no idea.
“take too many damn breaks”
How much time do your non-smoking workers spend in water cooler conversation or browsing the internet?
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