FOR virtually all patients, being admitted to hospital, despite the best efforts of staff, is a trying experience.

It is absolutely essential that hospital managers do all they can to alleviate this anxiety.

It’s certainly true that the vast majority of doctors and nurses across the UK work wonders at creating the right type of environment.

So the seemingly endless problem of patients, visitors and even staff, smoking outside hospital entrances is totally unacceptable.

Our local health trust has in the past tried to solve the issue by erecting smoking shelters.

But they gave up on this initiative because they wanted to eradicate the smell of smoking from the hospital grounds.

Unfortunately, the problem has transferred itself to hospital entrances and we now have an even more unacceptable scenario.

Difficult though it may be to enforce, there is surely little alternative but to ban all smoking from our hospital sites.

We need a zero tolerance approach and this can only be achieved by placing security staff at entrances to police the situation.