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Smoking cessation in practice (SCIP): creating sustainable delivery systems for smoking interventions
Patricia Hodgson, Regional Tobacco Programme Manager, Regional Public Health Group, Government Office for Yorkshire & the Humber, UK and Heather Thomson, Tobacco Control/Smoking Cessation Lead, Leeds PCT, UK
Abstract
Background:
Smoking Cessation in Practice (SCIP) is a toolkit aimed at improving systems, not poor performers. It provides a step by step approach to developing systems in general practice for the delivery of brief interventions. Its intended outcomes are:
1) to ensure patients are offered the best treatment for the
greatest chance at success.
2) to increase the numbers of patients offered brief interventions.
It identifies ten components essential for the sustained delivery of brief advice in a practice environment. The toolkit provides a step by step process to implement a sustainable system into a practice environment. eg GPs surgeries, dental practices, pharmacies.
Outcome:
For the past seven years, SCIP has been used by stop smoking services in West Yorkshire to engage primary care teams in smoking interventions, either increasing the number of referrals to the specialist service or to increase in-house stop smoking support. Results have been positive. For example in one primary care trust, the number of 4 week quits increased by 120% in two year after a smoking development workers engaged GP practices and pharmacies using SCIP as a tool.
Follow up:
The SCIP toolkit has been up-dated and revised to reflect experiences of stop smoking services development workers in using it as a toolkit over the past seven years and to ensure that it reflect social marketing principles. A major focus is increasing the confidence of development workers in influencing primary care teams in offering smoking interventions.
The Department of Health is planning to roll out the toolkit across England in regional workshop beginning late 2008.
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About the presenters
Patricia Hodgson was appointed Regional Tobacco Policy Manger for Yorkshire and the Humber Public Health Group in 2003. She has been involved in tobacco control activities since 1992 when she was asked by the Department of Health to coordinate a national pilot project evaluating the impact of a county wide tobacco control alliance on smoking prevalence. Patricia’s other posts have included senior health promotion officer (coronary heart disease) at Huddersfield Health Promotion, manager of the Huddersfield Stop Smoking Service and free lance health columnist for the local paper.
Heather, who is based in Leeds, has been working in the field of tobacco control and smoking cessation for 10 years. She was responsible for establishing the NHS Stop Smoking Services across the city in 1999 and has developed and oversees the delivery of the Leeds Tobacco Control Strategy. More recently Heather has been working in partnership with the Institute of Public Health in Lahore, Pakistan to implement and evaluate a ‘Smoke Free Homes’ demonstration project, which has involved developing and delivering training to health care workers in Pakistan and producing a range of suitable resources.
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