Sudbury health care workers aim to break smoking culture

It is national non-smoking week and many northerners are trying to drop the habit including those who work in health care.

But breaking the culture of smoking among nurses and doctors doesn't happen in one week.

Just ask Danielle Brosseau, who has been a smoker as long as she's been a nurse. She had her first cigarette in nursing school.

"We used to all smoke during class," she said.

For 42 years, she's worked in public health, hospitals, jails and now at Canadian Blood Services in Sudbury.

Brosseau said, for decades, smoking was part of the job, because "if you didn't smoke you didn't get a break."

She has quit in the past but has since gone back to her four smokes a day. Brosseau said she plans to make another try in the coming weeks. Comments by others are part of her motivation to end the habit.

"People say, 'Well, gee, you're so into fitness and you smoke? And you're a nurse and you smoke?' So, it's really a slap," she said.

At Sudburys hospital, counselling and free nicotine replacement treatment has been offered to workers for the past year.

Cancer services vice-president Mark Hartman said 58 people have gone through the program something that has also helped Health Sciences Norths budget.

"For the investment we make, we know that just reductions in sick time, can give us that return on investment," he said.

About 700 of the 4,000 workers at the Sudbury hospital are smokers, which is a lower percentage than the city it serves: it is estimated thatabout 25 per cent of Greater Sudburians smoke.