Telephone Quitlines to Help Surgical Patients Quit Smoking: Patient and Provider Attitudes
Background
The scheduling of elective surgery provides an excellent opportunity for cigarette smoking-cessation interventions. Abstinence from smoking may improve immediate surgical outcomes, and the surgical period represents a teachable moment for modifying smoking behavior. However, a variety of barriers to intervention exist. This qualitative, formative research identified themes to guide the development of a brief intervention used by the providers of surgical services to promote the use of telephone quitlines.
Methods
Structured interviews were conducted in 2007 with 19 cigarette smokers either scheduled for or recently receiving surgery at Mayo Clinic, Rochester MN and ten providers of surgical services (anesthesiologists and surgeons).
Results
Prominent patient themes included interest in quitting smoking around the time of surgery, a view of physicians having an important role in their cessation attempts, and a profound lack of knowledge regarding telephone quitline services. Patients were also poorly informed regarding the immediate benefits of quitting to surgical outcomes. Prominent provider themes included a similar ignorance of quitline services and a lack of time to deliver interventions. Although providers expressed interest in referring to quitlines if this could be easily accomplished, they were willing to spend only a limited amount of time learning how to intervene.
Conclusions
Both surgical patients and providers are potentially receptive to a quitline-based smoking-cessation intervention in the peri-operative period, but significant barriers exist.
aDepartment of Anesthesiology, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota
bDepartment of Internal Medicine, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota
cDepartment of Health Sciences Research, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota
dDepartment of Psychiatry and Psychology, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota
eDepartment of Preventive Medicine, University of Tennessee Health Science Center, Memphis, Tennessee
fDepartment of Epidemiology and Cancer Control, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, Tennessee
Address correspondence and reprint requests to: David O. Warner, MD, Department of Anesthesiology, Mayo Clinic, 200 First Street SW, Rochester MN 55905
ABSTRACT