Are Nurses and Auxiliary Healthcare Workers Equally Effective in Delivering Smoking Cessation Support in Primary Care?

Conclusions: HCAs appear equally effective as nurses in supporting smoking cessation, although they do this with greater patient contact. Using auxiliary practitioners to deliver cessation support could free up nurse time and reduce costs. Implications: This study found that primary care patients receiving smoking cessation support from auxiliary healthcare workers were just as likely to be abstinent up to 6 months later as those patients seen by nurses. While the auxiliary healthcare workers achieved this with slightly increased patient contact time, the advice delivered, pharmacotherapies provided and patient satisfaction were similar to that of nurses. Expanding the auxiliary healthcare worker role to include smoking cessation support could increase role satisfaction and reduce the costs of cessation support delivery in primary care.
Source: Nicotine and Tobacco Research - Category: Addiction Authors: Tags: Original Investigation Source Type: research