Exploring the views of healthcare professionals on increasing smoking cessation advice for patients

Background: Smoking cessation advice provided by healthcare professionals can be effective in increasing smoking cessation among patients. Any successful intervention will require staff knowledge of local barriers to implementation. However, the views of Irish healthcare professionals on increasing the provision of smoking cessation advice and the associated barriers remain unexplored. 

Aims: To explore the views of Irish healthcare professionals on barriers to increasing smoking cessation advice for patients in a large Irish university teaching hospital. 

Method: Semi-structured interviews were conducted separately with 16 healthcare professionals in a large Irish university teaching hospital.

Results: The main barriers identified were patient and staff attitudes, time and service constraints, information not readily available, and issues and opinions on a smoke-free campus policy in a hospital setting.

Conclusion: Our results revealed several barriers, expressed by Irish healthcare professionals, to providing smoking cessation advice to patients. This supports the need to implement a multi-component intervention in a hospital setting to improve the rate of provision of smoking cessation advice in patients by healthcare professionals.