Melanie Perry Secondary Care Smoking Cessation Specialist, Leicester City Stop Smoking Service
Abstract
Within secondary care we continuously strive to capture referrals, searching for new and innovative ways to engage with patients with long term conditions and aim to treat and improve our patients declining health.
We were invited to work alongside the Complex COPD clinic at Glenfield Hospital to see if improvements could be made to the referral pathway, outcome and relationship with this ‘hard to reach’ group, of whom around 30% are still smoking and cessation uptake historically poor.
All patients that attend the clinic and who smoke were routinely seen, alongside the clinicians, by the specialist advisor who took them through the various options available to them. By taking a pragmatic approach, we have eased the journey by taking away any pressure to quit immediately and used a harm reduction approach with a tailored treatment programme motivating the patients to act straight away.
This presentation will outline the planning, preparation, treatment methods and the subsequent successful outcomes that we have experienced one year on, some of which are higher than our regular population of service users.
Source of funding: Leicester City Stop Smoking Service
