Effective identification and referral of hospital patients to stop smoking support
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Presenter(s)
Liz Hughes Smoking Cessation Delivery Manager, National Centre for Smoking Cessation and Training (NCSCT)
Abstract
The NCSCT Community Interest Company was commissioned by the Department of Health to test a streamlined, systematic and robust system to increase the referral of smokers from an acute hospital setting to appropriate stop smoking support.
The NCSCT Stop Smoking Referral System is a whole hospital approach to providing stop smoking support for patients. This includes an innovative electronic referral mechanism that is incorporated within the existing hospital IT system, ensuring that there is a straightforward and efficient method for referring smokers onto their local stop smoking service. It focuses on implementing systems that support staff to deliver ‘Very Brief Advice’ (VBA) and electronically refer patients, with those identified as smokers sorted by their postcode and referrals automatically sent to the correct local stop smoking service. The system also includes an online training programme that provides the necessary knowledge required to deliver VBA in the hospital setting.
The system was piloted in the Queen Alexandra Hospital within Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust for three months from 15 November 2011 to 17 February 2012. There has been a thorough quantitative and qualitative evaluation and the results of which will be discussed in this presentation.
Source of funding: Department of Health
Declaration of interest: The NCSCT has a commercial interest in the NCSCT Stop Smoking Referral System.
