Friday, Nov. 20 marks one year smoke-free at Shands Jacksonville, along with the University of Florida Health Science Center-Jacksonville, and University of Florida Jacksonville Healthcare, Inc. clinics. Last year, Shands and hospitals throughout Jacksonville banned the use of tobacco products on campus.
Shands Jacksonville offers a free tobacco-cessation program to Shands and UF employees on campus. The six-week program consists of a weekly one-hour class in which participants learn ways to manage cravings by establishing healthy habits and participating in a support group. The program was recently expanded to include employees’ spouses, also free of charge.
For Sherri Brown, a purchasing agent at Shands Jacksonville and the mother of a 7-year-old daughter, the announcement of the hospital going smoke-free gave her the push she needed to quit. “I knew smoking was slowly killing me,” she said. “When the hospital decided to prohibit smoking on campus, I did not look at it as a restriction on my rights. I looked at it as a much-needed tool to help me quit and I joined the program. I carried a picture of my daughter with me to every meeting and whenever I thought I couldn’t do it, I would look at her picture.”
“I do believe you have to be ready, but the support you receive from the stop-smoking program is wonderful,” she added. Brown has been smoke-free since Sept. 21, 2008.
With the help of the hospital’s smoking cessation program, UF employee Tracy Hancock celebrated her first anniversary of being smoke-free on Oct. 27 of this year. “This was my third attempt to quit. I believe the class was a big part in helping me,” she said. “Learning different things to do when I got the urge to smoke and having a support group really helped. I believe I gained my health as well as my life back when I made the choice to quit.”