ADarksideJedi
Jackie Malfoy
“A person who smokes should not be working in a heath care institution on a new hire basis, that’s the way we approached it,” said Cleveland Clinic’s Medical Director of Employee Health Dr. Paul Terpeluk. “Health care workers need to exemplify what it is like to be healthy and that's what we're doing.”
In just the past eight months, Gwinnett Medical Center and DeKalb Medical Center, both in metro Atlanta, have implemented a similar ban. Emory Healthcare is evaluating its options. Officials there tell Fox News, a decision on a similar policy could come as soon as a week.
“It’s really tough to maintain and hire quality employees so we want to make sure everything we are doing is beneficial not only to the organization but our employees as well,” said Emory spokesperson Lance Skelly. “We’ve talked to our employees about it, we’ve discussed the pros and cons of something like that and we’re also looking at how it’s being implemented elsewhere."
Emory officials are also looking at an increase in health insurance charges for employees who smoke. Some hospitals add a $20 to $50 surcharge per month for smokers covered by employer-paid health insurance.
But Amanda Farahany, an employment law attorney, says the problem with the ban on hiring people who smoke is it monitors what people are doing on their free time as opposed to what people are doing at work.
She also says with a shortage of nurses and medical staff this may not be the best time to do it.
“Hospitals right now have a health crisis with not being able to bring in enough nurses and a lot of nurses smoke," she said. "So, if you’re going to say, we’re not going to bring nurses in, how are we going to deal with the health care issues we have?”
Read more: http://liveshots.blogs.foxnews.com/2010/07/20/smokers-need-not-apply/#ixzz0unh8lXSV