Office-based training in tobacco cessation for dental professionals

During a 90-minute, on-site training session, a dentist/tobacco-cessation educator trained 293 dental professionals from 57 offices. The authors report statistically significant increases between the pre-training and follow-up surveys for 12 tobacco-cessation activities and the amount of time spent on such activities (P < .001). Using participants' estimates-taken at three months after the training-the authors calculated that an average of two patients per office had stopped using tobacco, two had stopped and relapsed, and eight patients were considering stopping tobacco usage.