Training health professionals in smoking cessation

Area of Science:

• Public Health
• Clinical Medicine
• Behavioral Science

Background:

• Cigarette smoking remains a leading cause of preventable global mortality.
• Brief interventions by healthcare professionals can prompt smoking cessation attempts.
• Regular reassessment of training program effectiveness is crucial for policy and clinical guidelines.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the effectiveness of training healthcare professionals in delivering smoking cessation interventions.
• To analyze how training characteristics (content, setting, delivery, intensity) influence patient outcomes.

Main Methods:

• Systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) up to August 2024.
• Included studies reported patient smoking abstinence at ≥6 months post-intervention.
• Assessed risk of bias using Cochrane RoB 1 tool and certainty of evidence with GRADE framework.

Main Results:

• High-certainty evidence shows training increases patient smoking cessation (RR 1.34).
• Higher-intensity training may yield better results, but evidence is low-certainty.
• Adjuncts like nicotine replacement therapy or prompts show potential but require further research.

Conclusions:

• Training healthcare professionals is a high-certainty effective method for increasing patient smoking cessation.
• Future research should explore multi-component interventions combining training with new cessation aids.