Helping patients in hospital to quit smoking

doi:10.1136/bmj.324.7329.64

BMJ 2002;324:64 ( 12 January )

Editorials

Helping patients in hospital to quit smoking

Dedicated counselling services are effective $---$ others are not

Papers p 87

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

This issue reports a study that nicely encapsulates the problems facing hospitals who want to encourage and help their patientsto stop smoking (p 87).¹ The study focuses on inpatients withcardiac disorders who want to stop smoking and examines whethera brief intervention (averaging 34 minutes) delivered on the wardby nurses would help them stop. It finds no effect at six weeksand at follow up after one year. This mirrors results with otherpatient groups. Most notably two large randomised controlled trials,one in the United Kingdom and one in Denmark, have found thata brief intervention by midwives failed to improve pregnant smokers'chances of stopping. ² ³ All three studies also found thatbusy staff had considerable difficulty finding time to undertakethe counselling. How can one square this with claims that briefadvice from healthcare professionals leads patients to stop smokingand that behavioural support increases . . . [Full text of this article]

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Relevant Article

Brief intervention during hospital admission to help patients to give up smoking after myocardial infarction and bypass surgery: randomised controlled trial: Peter Hajek, Tamara Z Taylor, and Peter Mills
BMJ 2002 324: 87-89. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

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