International No Tobacco Day at RLH
We don’t just want to look after pregnancy we also want to help mothers to stop smoking, we want to prevent or reduce smoking or passive smoking in pregnancy and its effect on future generations. Smoking has already killed over 100 million people since the millennium and is on course to cause a billion deaths by the end of this century.
We discuss with women the effects of smoking in pregnancy, why we offer carbon monoxide (CO) monitoring to all women that access our maternity services and what we have on offer in Tower Hamlets to reduce smoking and clean our environment.
We also had a competition with staff to discuss “How can you change a smoker’s life in just 30 seconds?”
The antenatal clinic on Friday is usually full with women and last week, for No Tobacco Day, we spoke to approximately 50 women about smoking and pregnancy. All of the women we spoke to confirmed that they have had CO monitoring done by their midwife except for two women. The two women consented to having it done on the day.
Well done to all the midwives for their hard work and ensuring smoking is discussed at the first booking appointment and CO monitoring is done at the same time.
We interviewed midwives in all of the areas in maternity (antenatal clinic, community midwives, postnatal ward and labour ward) and offered CO monitoring and 17 midwives took part in the CO monitoring with readings between 1-7. None of the midwives had a reading of zero, even the non-smokers.
WeCare for our staff at Barts Health, therefore all staff with CO reading above 4 have been encouraged to take up the Trust smoking cessation support service that is offered to all employees.
WDP run a smoking cessation clinic every Wednesday 9am -1pm in KGV Wing, Clinic 1A, St Bart's Hospital, to all staff and patients who want to quit smoking.