The Importance Of Smoking-Cessation Counseling

Smoking-cessation counseling is counseling to aid people to stop smoking. Just like any medical condition smoking can be very detrimental to the body. Therefore when a big lifestyle change is made, it must be made carefully and in stages. Strategies to help a person quit smoking include counseling, and the use of some medications. Smoking-cessation counseling can happen over multiple media’s. The patient can either have face to face counseling, web based counseling or telephone based counseling. Along with counseling many patients take a course of varenicline (Swan). Varenicline works by stopping the brain from feeling pleasure from smoking and therefore decreases a patient 's desire to smoke. Proactive telephone based counseling is very

These five steps act as the principles used to help patients quit smoking. Every patient that a physician sees should be asked if they use or have ever used tobacco at every visit. If the patient is a tobacco user the physician should advocate for them to quit in a clear strong and personalized manner. After this the patient should be assess for their interest in making an attempt to quit. If a patient is willing to quit they should be assisted by counseling and medications. Then a followup should be scheduled, whether this is in person or by phone it should be within a week of the patients quit date

The 5 R’s stand for relevance, risks, rewards, roadblocks and repetition. A patient should be told specifically how quitting would help them or their family. The patient should be asked of the potential problems tobacco use could cause. These include acute risks, long-term risks and environmental risks. Examples of these risks are shortness of breath, harm to pregnancy, impotence, infertility, heart attacks, strokes, cancers, chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases (COPD), cancer in family members, asthma, sudden infant death syndrome as well as many other risks. Not only should the risks be mentioned but the rewards of quitting such as improved health, food tasting better, saving money and setting a good example for children. The physician should acknowledge that barriers that may accompany quitting including withdrawal symptoms, weight gain, depression and being around other tobacco smokers. The 5th R, repetition refers the multiple attempts it may take to quit (The