General practitioners should use specific opportunities during consultations to encourage smokers to quit, said Dr Michael Boland, director of the postgraduate research centre at the Irish College of General Practitioners (ICGP).
Dr Boland presented research at the World Conference on Tobacco or Health yesterday, identifying antenatal visits, family planning consultations and seeing children with asthma as ideal times for GPs to offer advice on quitting smoking.
He pointed out that 50 per cent of consultations were for respiratory illness and that this offered doctors and practice nurses opportunities to give such advice.
He also highlighted the importance of general practice becoming "tobacco aware" - having non-smoking staff and a strict no smoking policy in the surgery.
"It means having doctors and nurses skilled in intervention techniques," he said. A practice should be accurately able to identify the number of smokers attending it as well as setting annual targets for quitting.
Dr Prannie Rhatigan, Dr Michelle Egan and Ms Norma Cronin of the ICGP and the Irish Cancer Society presented research outlining a training programme they ran for 600 GPs in the Republic to enable them to offer effective, brief intervention techniques for smokers.
The programme allows family doctors to offer a five-minute quit-smoking "package" to patients within a normal consultation. In an evaluation of the programme, GPs identified a number of barriers to giving advice, including limited time and a lack of finance. It was found that giving advice did not damage the doctor-patient relationship.
