At Christchurch Hospital, some visitors and patients smoked outside the main entrance, as they did at other hospitals run by the Canterbury District Health Board, the board's smokefree manager, Vivien Daley, said.
Measures to address this included staff being encouraged to ensure all patients were asked about their smoking status and offered appropriate intervention, such as nicotine replacement therapy, to help them avoid smoking while in hospital.
Many staff had completed education showing them how to deliver the national ABC strategy on smoking - Ask patients if they smoke, give Brief advice and offer Cessation support.
Similar training is being carried out at the Otago board.
It is expected that all present staff will have been trained by early next year by smokefree co-ordinator Duncan Edwards.
The campaign encourages staff to "ask about the elephant", which likens smoking to an elephant in the room.
It can be ignored because it might be considered too hard to deal with.
Nationally, hospitals are expected to reach a target of providing 80% of hospital patients with advice and help to quit smoking using the ABC approach by July next year.
At Southland Hospital in Invercargill, the campus is smokefree and there was an expectation patients and staff would leave the grounds if they wished to smoke, regional chief nursing and midwifery officer Leanne Samuel said.
To get off hospital property, patients or staff would have to go about 50 metres on to Kew or Elles Rds.
There was still an issue of some people smoking at the entrances.
The availability of nicotine replacement therapy in the hospital had gone a long way to improving the situation.
"We are getting better and better at helping people if they are wanting to quit," she said.
There was no move to consider a smoking room or anything similar, she said.
Inquiries about the situation in both Wellington and Auckland have not yet been answered
