Nurse-assisted counseling for smokers in primary care

Effectiveness of training health professionals to provide smoking cessation interventions: systematic review of randomised controlled trials

OBJECTIVE

To assess the effectiveness of interventions that train healthcare professionals in methods for improving the quality of care delivered to patients who smoke.

DESIGN

Systematic literature review.

SETTING

Primary care medical and dental practices in the United States and Canada. Patients were recruited opportunistically.

SUBJECTS

878 healthcare professionals and 11,228 patients who smoked and were identified in eight randomised controlled trials. In each of these trials healthcare professionals received formal training in smoking cessation, and their performance was compared with that of a control group.

MAIN MEASURES

Point prevalence rates of abstinence from smoking at six or 12 months in patients who were smokers at baseline. Rates of performance of tasks of smoking cessation by healthcare professionals, including offering counselling, setting dates to stop smoking, giving follow up appointments, distributing self help materials, and recommending nicotine gum.

METHODS

Trials were identified by multiple methods. Data were abstracted according to predetermined criteria by two observers. When possible, meta-analysis was performed using a fixed effects model and the results were subjected to sensitivity analysis.

RESULTS

Healthcare professionals who had received training were significantly more likely to perform tasks of smoking cessation than untrained controls. There was a modest increase in the odds of stopping smoking for smokers attending health professionals who had received training compared with patients attending control practitioners (odds ratio 1.35 (95% confidence interval 1.09 to 1.68)). This result was not robust to sensitivity analysis. The effects of training were increased if prompts and reminders were used. There was no definite benefit found for more intensive forms of counselling compared with minimal contact strategies.

CONCLUSIONS

Training health professionals to provide smoking cessation interventions had a measurable impact on professional performance. A modest, but non-robust, effect on patient outcome was also found, suggesting that training alone is unlikely to be an effective strategy for improving quality of care, unless organisational and other factors are also considered.

Biochemical validation of smoking status: pros, cons, and data from four low-intensity intervention trials

Biochemical validation of smoking status has long been considered essential, but recent reports have questioned its utility in certain kinds of field trials. We describe efforts to biochemically validate self-reports of smoking cessation from participants in four large-scale randomized trials in outpatient clinics, hospitals, worksites, and dental clinics. These studies included over 5,000 adults smokers who participated in the population-based low-intensity intervention evaluations. At a 1-year follow-up, 798 subjects reported no tobacco use. We attempted to verify these reports using saliva continine/carbon monoxide validation procedures. Overall, there was a moderately high nonparticipation rate (27%), a low disconfirmation rate (4%), and a high self-reported relapse rate (12%) in the interval between survey and biochemical validation. There were no differences between intervention and control conditions on any of the above variables. Longer durations of self-reported abstinence were strongly related to increased probability of biochemical confirmation. Differences in results across projects were related to how biochemical validation was conducted. These results, as well as statistical power considerations, raise questions about whether biochemical validation procedures are practical, informative, or cost-effective in such population-based, low-intensity intervention research.