Abstract:
This study has proposed to develop and evaluate a measure to induce smoking cessation seeking behavior among smokers at a community pharmacy by the smoker's closely related person. The study will compare the rate of smoking cessation seeking behavior between smokers who receive an intervention versus smokers who do not receive it. The study has 2 parts of the process. The first part is to develop a measure to induce smokers to smoking cessation service at community pharmacy by the smoker’s closely related person. The measure was consisted of 1) Giving pamphlet “Inducing smokers stop smoking” which is specific to the smoker’s age. 2)Giving pamphlet “Inducing smokers getting smoking cessation service at community pharmacy 3)Telling the advantages of receiving one-on-one counseling of smoking cessation by the expert pharmacist and 4)Advice the closely related persons suggest their smokers to participate in a smoking cessation service at the community pharmacy. The another part is an experimental research which we designed as a randomized, controlled trial. One-hundred and thirty six smoker's closely related persons were randomized into intervention and control groups of 68 people each. The intervention group received the measure whereas the control group was provided only suggestion by their closely related person to participate in a smoking cessation service at the community pharmacy. The primary outcome is the number of smokers who came to seek for smoking cessation service at community pharmacies collected by the pharmacists. The secondary outcome is the provision of pamphlets and advice to smokers by the smoker's closely related person. The smoker's closely related person were called or contacted via mail to inquire about them. Data were analyzed using descriptive and analytical statistics. The result of this study shows that none of smokers in both intervention and control group gets smoking cessation service at the community pharmacy. Interviewing data were taken from 62 and 63 smoker's closely related persons in intervention group and control group respectively by phone. The percentage of the smoker’s closely related persons who suggested that the smoker should seek smoking cessation advice from the pharmacy was 86.8% for the intervention group and 76.5% for the control group . The smokers in the intervention group has a higher tendency of attending the smoking cessation service, indicated by 20.6% and 10.3% of attending for the intervention group and the control group consecutively ;however, the difference is statistical insignificant. The results are also as same as when categorize by age, the sample of each group in the intervention group have higher tendency to attend the service than the sample in the control group, but the difference is not statistically significant. More than 80% of smoker's closely related persons in the intervention group had submitted those pamphlets and recommended the smokers to get smoking cessation service provided at the community pharmacy. In summary, the measure to induce smokers to participate in a smoking cessation service at the community pharmacy is failed at its intended goal. However, the effort of this measure causes some smokers to consider cessation of smoking. Therefore, this measure is practicable for inducing some smokers to begin the process of quitting smoking at their community pharmacy.
TRC Data Center