Training and resources for general practitioners

Quitting smoking is the best thing a person can do for their health. While that’s not new, this might be: a brief advice conversation with a patient about their smoking is quick and effective. 

In conjunction with health professionals, we have developed a 3-step brief advice model: Ask, Advise, Help. It focuses on identifying smokers and helping them to access best-practice care – a combination of pharmacotherapy and multi-session behavioural intervention through Quitline. 

• Ask all patients about smoking status and document this in their medical record.
• Advise patients who smoke about the best way to quit and why this is important.
• Help by offering referral to behavioural intervention through Quitline (13 7848), and help patients to access smoking cessation pharmacotherapy such as nicotine replacement therapy (NRT).

Find links below to our online training for GPs and nurses, and links to resources to help you support your patients to quit.

This free online training is designed to support smoking-cessation activity in general practice. GPs and nurse practitioners will be introduced to a 3-step brief advice model and a menu of options for providing smoking cessation support to patients.  

Duration: Approximately 2 hours 

Cost: 

• Training is free for VIC and WA learners 
• A registration fee of $20 applies for all other states and territories

Outcomes: 

• Describe the impact of providing brief advice for smoking cessation on smoking status compared to only asking about smoking status.
• Deliver brief advice for smoking cessation as per Quit's 3-step model
• Utilise appropriate pharmacotherapies to assist smoking cessation  
• Identify and manage potential drug interactions associated with smoking cessation thereby increasing patient safety
• Identify options for behavioural support for smoking cessation, including Quitline 

Certification: Printable certificate and CPD-points transcript.

In consultation with health professionals, we have developed this education activity to support GPs to make systematic changes to the way they encourage patients to quit smoking. GPs can undertake this project singularly, but ideally it would be undertaken as a whole-of-practice project, incorporating other GPs, the practice manager, nurses and other practice staff. 

Completion of this activity would qualify practices for the Practice Incentives Program Quality Improvement incentive (PIP-QI: smoking status improvement measure). 

Duration: The PDSA cycle is designed to be completed over a period of approximately 15 weeks. You may stop and resume as many times as you need.

Pre-requisites: You need to complete Quit’s online brief advice training (above) prior to registering for the PDSA. 

Cost: 

• Training is free for VIC and WA learners 
• A registration fee of $20 applies for other states and territories

Outcomes: 

• Describe the evidence that supports the use of brief advice for smoking cessation in general practice.
• Provide staff members and patients with a supportive general practice environment that is conducive to quit attempts. 
• Analyse and use patient data to identify all patients who smoke (clean up ‘unknown’ smoking status) and to target and tailor smoking cessation messages to the practice’s current cohort of smokers.
• Implement a system within your practice to manage and follow-up patients who are current smokers
• Deliver evidence-based smoking cessation brief advice to current smokers, including referral to Quitline and NRT if clinically appropriate. 

Certification: 

Printable certificate and transcript is available

Quitline is a confidential, evidenced-based telephone counselling service.  Highly-trained Quitline specialists use behaviour change techniques and motivational interviewing over multiple calls to help people plan, make and sustain a quit attempt.

There are three ways to refer your patients to Quitline:

• Use the Quitline fax referral sheet

• Refer patients online

• Send Quitline referral letters from your general practice software. (If you use Best Practice or Medical Director, these referral letters should already be on your system. Instructions to manually upload referral letters onto other software or older versions of software can be found here).
  

We have worked with health professionals and consumers to develop a range of resources to help you help your patients stop smoking. You can order these through the Quit resource order form.

• A quick reference guide outlining how to support patients to stop smoking.
  
• Ask, Advise, Help chart describing the steps of brief advice conversations about smoking.
• A tent card to display in practices, prompting patients to talk to their GP about smoking.

• A table outlining drug interactions with smoking, detailing the impact of smoking cessation on drug dosages. 

• A flyer outlining the importance of shared care in supporting Aboriginal patients to stop smoking.

• Waiting room resources, such as the “Did you know your doctor can help you quit smoking?” poster.

• Fact sheets on tobacco use and quitting.

• Stress cycle of smoking poster that you could place in your waiting room.

• Benefits of quitting poster.

• Appointment cards which have space to write three appointment times on one side and tips for managing cravings on the other.

• Motivational tools – Quit for cash postcard helps people see how much they could save. There is also a youth version.

• Information to support nicotine replacement therapy use.

• Self help material – My quit plan brochure and What I can do to stop smoking wallet card.

Tobacco in Australia: Facts and Issues is a comprehensive review of the major issues in smoking and health in Australia, compiled by Cancer Council Victoria.

Not only can the AAH model be used by individual health professionals in their everyday interactions with patients, it can also be used to guide change. The goal is to systematically embed smoking cessation care into routine practice. Read more.