The Whitehorse General Hospital has shut down its smoking room and patients wanting to light up now have to go outside.

Val Pike, the community liaison nurse, said Tuesday the hospital spent time looking at the policies at other facilities around Canada and found most no longer provide smoking rooms for their patients.

'We thought it was probably time to close ours,' she said.

The smoking room has been available to patients for almost a decade, since the hospital was built to replace the one that had opened in the 1950s on the same site.

The door to the room was officially locked at 12:01 a.m. Monday.

The patients are now required to smoke in a designated outdoor area that is several feet away from an entrance and not near the front door of the hospital, said Pike.

The decision to close the smoking room was not made overnight, she said, and involved a few months of discussion.

However, there was not much opposition during the discussions and there as yet have not been any complaints about the closure, she added.

Pike said the lack of complaints may be because it's still summer. Smokers will still be able to go outside in the winter if they wish.

They probably won't want to linger, though, she said.

The well-below freezing weather should not cause problems for patients with IVs, she said, but the temperatures will likely be cold on the hands.

'We understand that this will cause inconvenience for patients who smoke,' said a memorandum posted on the door of the smoking room on July 12. 'We will provide as much support as possible to help them reduce and hopefully stop smoking.'

'Most people who smoke do because they are addicted, not because they enjoy it,' said Pike.

The closure of the smoking room should help them make the decision to quit for themselves, she said, and the hospital is willing to do everything it can to help.

Nicotine patches and other types of medication can be provided to smokers who want to try to quit while they are in the hospital, she said.

The decision is meant to promote and support a healthy lifestyle, said Pike.

'This is another small step in improving the health of Yukoners,' stated the memo.