Short length of stay: How NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde smokefree hospital service meets this challenge to service delivery?

Author and presenter:
Agnes McGowan
Health Improvement Lead Tobacco, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, UK

Abstract
The Health Board has a HEAT (H6) target to achieve 21,240 quitters at 4 weeks by 2011. The Smokefree Hospital Service has a local target trajectory for referrals and quitters which relies on referrals from key hospital specialities.

Another HEAT target the Health Board has to achieve (T6) is an agreed reduction in the rate of hospital admissions and bed day’s (short length of stay) of patients with primary diagnosis of COPD, Asthma, Diabetes or CHD by 2010/11.This is the same target patient group and target timeframe for referral’s to the Hospital Stop Smoking Service.

Patients admitted to hospital, especially as a result of a smoking related disease, are often motivated to quit. Acute services therefore provide a window of opportunity for smoking cessation interventions.

It is essential that every quit is counted toward the HEAT target. This session describes the partnership working with frontline staff, tools developed to support clarity in roles and responsibilities and the simple referral procedure which are key in ensuring that cessation services are appropriate and effective for this vulnerable group in this ever reducing time period of opportunity.

Source of funding: N/A

Declaration of interest: none

About the presenter
Agnes has worked in the health service for 30 years. Her career began in Glasgow as a nurse and also as a midwife. She then moved into public health and for ten years worked as a health visitor in Lanarkshire.

Following completion of a masters degree in public health, she then moved to health promotion with Lanarkshire Health Board with a remit for women and children’s health, developing the well known ‘Can’t Get Fitter Than a Breast Fed Nipper’ campaign.

Agnes has always been interested and active in the tobacco field. She took up her current job share post in 2002, leading Glasgow’s Specialist Tobacco team with smoking cessation services as her main area of responsibility.