title: Impact of educational outreach visits on smoking cessation activities performed by specialist physicians: a randomized trial.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To find out whether educational visits by a nurse to specialist physicians improved their self-reporting of smoking cessation activities; whether these visits increased the percentage of physicians who were aware of and recommended a computer-tailored smoking cessation program and who participated in a training workshop on tobacco dependency treatment.
  
  
  METHODS
  Specialist private practice physicians (n = 523) working in Geneva, Switzerland were randomly assigned to either receiving (n = 261) or not receiving (n = 262) a single 40-minute visit by a trained nurse in 2003. The physicians answered a postal questionnaire 5 months after the visits indicating the percentage of their patients they counselled or treated for tobacco dependency and we recorded whether physicians took part in the workshop.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Only half (53%) of the physicians agreed to receive a visit. At follow-up more physicians in the intervention group than in the control group were aware of the computer-tailored program (73% vs. 39%, p < 0.001) and more physicians in the intervention group said they recommended the use of this program to more patients (20% vs. 10%, p = 0.009). Among non-smoking physicians only, the proportion of patients who were advised to quit smoking was higher in the intervention than in the control group (69% vs. 54%, p = 0.019, as reported by physicians). The intervention had no impact on physicians' participation in the workshop.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Visits by a nurse increased the proportion of physicians who recommended to their patients the use of a computer-tailored smoking cessation program. Among non-smoking physicians only, the intervention increased the proportion of patients who received the advice to quit smoking, as reported by physicians.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine, University of Geneva, CMU, Switzerland. jean-francois.etter@imsp.ch
authors.forename: Jean-François
authors.initials: JF
authors.lastname: Etter
mesh_terms: D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D002983:Clinical Competence; D003152:Community Health Nursing; D003376:Counseling; D004502:Education, Medical, Continuing; D006801:Humans; D010818:Practice Patterns, Physicians' / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D011322:Primary Prevention; D011331:Private Practice; D015397:Program Evaluation; D016540:Smoking Cessation / Q000379:methods*; D013038:Specialization; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D013557:Switzerland; D013813:Therapy, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D016896:Treatment Outcome