A Survey into Smokers’ Interest in Quitting Smoking and in the Provision of Smoking Cessation Counselling in Community Pharmacies

Overview

Since even a little help from healthcare professionals provided to smokers in the form of a clear-cut and resolute interventions may help increase a rather low rate of smokers’ successful attempts to quit smoking, the pharmacists, who are on a daily basis in a close contact with the patients-smokers, have a very good position to assume an important role in enforcing the anti-smoking activities, both in the form of their active approach to such patients and the provision of counselling to support smoking cessation. Our questionnaire was designed to assess the interest of smokers in the Czech Republic and Slovakia in quitting smoking and the interest of those who intend to give up their bad habit in smoking cessation counselling provided in community pharmacies as well as their potential willingness to pay for this service. The survey has shown that almost 80 % of smokers want to quit smoking. Of those, some 42 % are interested in smoking cessation counselling provided in community pharmacies, while around 37 % are yet undecided as to whether they would use such services. Nearly 91 % of potential clients of smoking cessation counselling service expressed willingness to pay for it, 40 % of them said they would be willing to pay more then 100 Czech/Slovak crowns (around 3 EUR) for the service. Smoking cessation counselling in community pharmacies could become another effective tool to help cut down the number of smokers and also improve the prestige of pharmaceutical profession as such. The great interest of smokers in quitting smoking and in smoking cessation counselling provided in community pharmacies supports our effort to establish the service as a common service of pharmaceutical care in the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

Key words:
smoking – smoking cessation – quit smoking interest – pharmacy – pharmaceutical care