The Worldview of Hospital Security Staff Implications for Health Promotion Policy Implementation

Interventions to encourage compliance with smoking control policies often rely on intermediaries for implementation, and the culture of the intermediary group might affect policy implementation. The authors present an ethnography of security staff involved in enforcing restrictive smoking policies in a large hospital in Canada. They find strong norms associated with control, mutuality, and deference to authority. Common sense interpretation rather than strict enforcement of rules prevails. To be enforced effectively, smoking policy would have to compete with other duties and elevate the security staff's perceived status in the eyes of visitors, staff, and patients.