The smoking cessation clinic.
Tobacco smoking is a disease and the leading cause of preventable death in industrialized countries. The control of smoking is a priority for all health professionals. The best measure for counteracting this disease is to promote smoking cessation among current smokers. In fact smoking cessation results not only in an immediate reduction in mortality and morbidity, but also a decrease in the disease prevalence and consequently in the probability that youngsters are "infected". A smoking cessation clinic can be an easy and effective way to treat tobacco use and dependence. It gives intensive treatments to smokers motivated to quit, ensuring a higher success rate, but also treats "difficult" patients. Any district authority can start a clinic because it is a "low resource-low budget" structure: its staff is composed of three part-time professionals (a physician, a nurse, a psychologist); it operates with a few, cheap technical instruments and uses only evidence based treatments. The difficulties concern some existing historical and cultural gaps: so far, health staff have not included this activity in their routine, are poorly trained about smoking cessation and have smoking habits of their own. Moreover, in many countries smoking cessation interventions are not recognized as services covered by the National Health Service or private insurance. Thus it is necessary to educate and update staff on smoking cessation. To obtain smoke free hospitals and premises, special smoking cessation programmes are offered to health staff and the smoking cessation clinic is the setting where this activity preferentially takes place. To satisfy the requirements for a smoking cessation clinic, scientific societies can play an important role as providers of continuing professional education and as solicitors for the government to encourage allocation of resources to these activities.
Pulmonary and TB Unit, ASL 7 Ospedale Civile, Via Forlanini 71, I-31029 Vittorio Veneto, Italy.
S
S
Nardini
D001290:Attitude; D003376:Counseling; D005060:Europe; D006266:Health Education; D006801:Humans; D012307:Risk Factors; D016540:Smoking Cessation / Q000379:methods; D000074606:Smoking Prevention