Leading on from the previous case study regarding smoking, Smoking causes 5000 preventable deaths every year in New Zealand. The government's initiative is to ban smoking by the year 2025.
In order to set an example, it is proposed that anybody who works in health-care (knowing full-well the risks of smoking) should encouraged to stop via a series of measures. If they are unable to do so, they will unfortunately be sacked.
The smoke-free health-care service will be accomplished firstly by introducing stringent hiring measures so only non-smokers are hired by health-care institutions (ten year background checks will be introduced to ascertain whether a person is a smoker). Secondly, smokers who are currently working within health-care organisations will be required to stop, or face the sack within a reasonable time-frame of six months. A stop-smoking program will be set up to help those who wish to recieve it. On graduation from the program, former smoking health-care workers will recieve a diploma (graded according to performance).
It is not ethically acceptable that health-care professionals who are engaged in promoting a healthy life-style whilst , in some cases, caring for people who are sick (especially from smoking related diseases) should continue to smoke. This is very poor professionalism. It would be like a professional athelete endorsing cigarette smoking.
There is evidence that second-hand smoke causes death, so that even those smokers who smoke during breaks are endangering the lives of those under their care. In 1992, the Journal of the American Medical Association published a review of available evidence on the relationship between second-hand smoke and heart disease, and estimated that second-hand smoke exposure was responsible for 35,000 to 40,000 deaths per year in the United States in the early 1980s (Steenland, 1992).
reference
Steenland K (January 1992). 'Passive smoking and the risk of heart disease'.JAMA 267 (1): 94–9. doi:10.1001/jama.267.1.94. PMID 1727204.
It is proposed that health-care professionals who smoke should be forced to quit smoking or be sacked