Helping Smokers Quit: A Guide For Nurses

Publication Date: May 2005

Publisher: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality; Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

Author(s): Tobacco Free Nurses

Research Area: Health

Type: Report

Abstract:

This pamphlet was designed to assist nurses in developing a standard set of questions and responses for treating patients who smoke. The pamphlet is organized around the "5A's": ask, advise, assess, assist and arrange. Each page contains a short paragraph of bulleted information regarding methods of encouraging smokers to quit, to create a plan for quitting, etc. Each page is simply laid out and emphasizes a concrete action that a health care professional can take in order to encourage quitting smoking. The main points of the pamphlet are:

* Ask about tobacco use at every visit;
* Advise quitting;
* Assess readiness to quit;
* Assist tobacco users in formulating a quit plan; and,
* Arrange follow-up visits.

The last page is a list of smoking cessation medications and dosages. The pamphlet emphasizes that if every one of the country's 2.2 million nurses succeeded in getting just one tobacco user to quit per year, the rate of U.S. citizens quitting during that year would triple.