Giving up smoking is easier for patients with access to telephone counselling

Research question Can telephone counselling help people to quit smoking?

Answer Yes. A series of calls from a counsellor works better than advice given during routine visits to a primary care doctor.

Why did the authors do the study? The US national action plan for smoking cessation recommends the setting up of telephone quitlines to provide counselling and access to drug treatments for people who want to stop smoking. Telephone counselling may be convenient for patients, but it's still unclear whether it works any better than the straightforward advice given by primary care doctors during the course of a routine consultation. These authors wanted to find out.

What did they …