Your role as a professional to advise patients to stop smoking, why talk about smoking and the impact smoking has on communities.
Your role
NICE guidance (NG209) on preventing the uptake of tobacco, promoting quitting, and treating dependence recommends that at every opportunity, health and social care professionals should ask people if they smoke and advise them to stop smoking in a way that best suits their preferences.
There's a very simple and fast way to support smokers that you work with, and that's to deliver Very Brief Advice. This is a lifesaving intervention that triggers quit attempts, that can be delivered in 30 seconds.
Very Brief Advice training is free online and takes only minutes to complete.
Find more information on training and guidance.
Why talk about smoking with people you work with
Tobacco dependency is a chronic, relapsing condition that usually starts in childhood.
Around two-thirds of people who smoke would prefer not to be smoking.
Every cigarette smoked damages the lungs in a way that may not show until later in life.
After the age of 40 years, for every year of continued smoking, a person loses about 3 months of life expectancy.
People who stay smoking or fail to quit, often do so, not out of choice, but because they're physically addicted to nicotine.
Smoking is the single largest contributor towards health inequalities – sadly, people who smoke die on average 10 years earlier than people who don't smoke.
The impact on communities
We also know that the habit of smoking clusters within groups of people, families, and communities.
Smoking is passed between generations of families and communities, influenced by social norms and the familiarisation people have with smoking or the physical addiction.
Where smoking prevalence is higher, smoking becomes normalised. Children growing up with caregivers who smoke are twice as likely to have tried cigarettes and four times more likely to regularly smoke.
Two-thirds of people who try one cigarette will go on to become regular smokers.