Setting up and effectively running a hospital based stop smoking service

Authors:
Gillian McIlhinney and Susan Jones

Presenters:
Gillian McIhinney
Specialist Stop Smoking Adviser for Secondary Care, Middlesbrough, Redcar and Cleveland Community Services Specialist Stop Smoking Service, Middlesbrough, UK

Nicola Ann Clarke
Stop Smoking Faciliator, James Cook University Hospital, Middlesborough, UK

Abstract
Setting up and effectively running a hospital based stop smoking service.

We provide a hospital-based Stop Smoking service for inpatients, outpatients, carers and hospital staff in a major teaching hospital
trust in the North East of England.

Funding was successfully secured by the PCT for the Stop Smoking Pilot Project which consists of a team of four hospital based stop smoking facilitators, co-ordinated by a Specialist Stop Smoking Advisor who works closely with the Primary Care Stop Smoking Service to create a seamless transfer of care from secondary care to the primary care services.

The Pilot Project is being evaluated by Teesside University. Initially only three directorates, Respiratory Medicine, Cardiology, ENT and one division, Women and Children are included in the project.

We make daily visits to wards assessing new patients who have expressed a desire to stop smoking. We provide them with information, support and treatment. In addition, we also see referrals from medical staff requesting that patients be seen whilst attending outpatient clinics, prescribing where appropriate. We also run four drop-in Stop Smoking Clinics within the hospital available to all outpatients, carers and staff.

Although only in the initial phases of the pilot, there has already been a significant increase in patient referrals from the original 20 patients a month to now over 100 a month and this number is continuing to increase and we are presently achieving a 27% quit rate.

Source Funding: PCT

Conflicts of Interest: none