Doin' it right: put that cigarette down

If an upbeat music video filmed in a hospital emergency ward isn't quirky enough for you, add in a shot of an icy morgue drawer being opened to reveal a skeleton with a cigarette, says The Vancouver Sun.

No one can say the Vancouver Coastal Health authority isn't taking a creative approach to getting staff, patients and visitors to stop smoking on hospital properties.

Members of the classic rock band Prism even provided studio sound for the video, and Powder Blues Band songwriter Tom Lavin allowed a rework of his 1980 hit Doin' It Right. The result is suitably tortured lyrics like, "Advising them to quit could be savin' their life, doin' it right, saving all that strife."

It's a light approach to a deadly serious subject that lung transplant recipient Silvia Houchen knows all about. She used to smoke a pack and a half a day.

"I hope people read this and have second thoughts about lighting up. I wish I'd never started smoking," the 55-year-old from Port Coquitlam said in a phone interview.

She took up cigarettes as a teenager and quit at age 50, but it was too late. She already had emphysema and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and says she might not have lived out this year if not for a lung transplant in September. "I see people smoking right outside the doors of the hospital. Sometimes there's a big cloud of smoke ... It's so sad."

Hospital properties throughout B.C. have been official no-smoking zones since 2008, but it's not unusual to spot visitors, workers and patients - often pulling along an IV pole - puffing away in some hidden corner.

Vancouver General Hospital is being targeted in the current campaign because it has the highest number of smokers on-site of all Vancouver Coastal Health hospitals.

Tactics include sandwich boards and posters telling people how they can get help to quit - or at least stop while they're in hospital. Patients who are smokers can ask for nicotine replacement gum, patches and inhalers to keep them off tobacco.

Smoking slows healing time for patients, endangers the health of staff and visitors, and exposes others to second-hand smoke, the health authority says.

Such is the lure of nicotine that some smoking bans have been criticized for endangering patients in the rest of Canada, where IV lines can freeze in the time it takes a smoker to get off hospital property.