Smoking cessation 1: interventions to support attempts at quitting

Advising patients on how to stop smoking is part of a nurse's role. Patients can be resistant to the intervention and this article, the first of five on smoking cessation, offers insights on the importance of creating optimism about stopping smoking. It describes how to give very brief advice to encourage patients to make a life-changing decision to quit, the role of stop-smoking services, and the use of products and behavioural interventions that nurses can use to help reduce smoking prevalence and improve patients' health.

In this article…

• The effectiveness of brief interventions and referral to stop-smoking services

• How to deliver effective stop-smoking messages

• The latest guidance on vaping

This article has been double-blind peer reviewed

Key points

Smoking still causes more than 200 premature deaths in the UK every day

Half of primary and community care professionals do not offer recommended stop-smoking advice

Very brief advice from nurses on how to stop smoking can encourage more patients to quit if it is optimistic in tone

Combining treatment with specialist support has been shown to give people the best chance to stop smoking

Vaping, while not risk-free, is much safer than smoking and an effective way to stop smoking