Smoking Cessation
Smoking Cessation
Here is an example of how dental team members might give smoking cessation advice to their patients in a dental surgery setting.
ASK your patient
- Raise the issue as part of the routine examination - enquiring as to your patients' smoking habits should cause no embarrassment. In addition to the risks of oral cancer, smoking is strongly linked with periodontal disease, as well as the widely recognised association with cardiovascular and pulmonary disease.
- All patients should have their smoking status established and checked at every visit.
- Patients should be described as smoker, non-smoker or recent ex-smoker
Once you've established that your patient is a smoker, questions to ask include:
- How many a day do you smoke?
- How quickly do you light up in the morning?
- Have you ever tried to stop before?
- Are you at all interested in stopping now?
Those patients who smoke more than 20-a-day and light up within 20 minutes of waking are more heavily addicted to nicotine, and it will be more of a struggle for them to give up.
Giving up smoking is a difficult process and patients may have been through the process of quitting a number of times before they successfully quit the habit.
If the patient is an ex-smoker, ask them:
- How long is it now since you've stopped?
- How are you coping?