Healthcare Providers Can Help to Double, Triple or Quadruple Quit Rates
Healthcare providers play a powerful role in ensuring all patients who use tobacco get help to quit. Effective treatments exist that can produce long-term or permanent abstinence:
- When a physician intervenes, abstinence rates can double.
- Nurses can have a big impact, too. For tools and guidelines, click here.
- When smokers use one of the seven FDA-approved medications, long-term abstinence rates can triple.
- Smokers who use the Wisconsin Tobacco Quit Line quit smoking at a rate that’s as high as four times the rate of those who quit cold turkey, according to an independent survey.
Even greater success can result from the combined use of pharmacotherapy and counseling. Click here for a pharmacotherapy treatment chart. Treatments, including counseling, have been shown to be both clinically effective and cost-effective, relative to other medical and disease prevention interventions.
U.S. Public Health Service Clinical Practice Guideline: Treating Tobacco Use and Dependence
