Development and evaluation of a training course for practice nurses: helping people to stop smoking

This paper describes a 2-day training course for practice nurses in advice-giving to smokers. The course incorporated information on the epidemiology, physiology and psychology of smoking and a strategy for giving advice based upon the health-beliefs model. The course was systematically evaluated on measures of knowledge about health and smoking and on confidence in various advice-giving activities. The results showed that the nurses gained significantly in both knowledge and confidence following the course. The prospect of further training courses for practice nurses in other areas of health promotion is discussed.