Welcome to the Tobacco Dependency Service
At HHFT, we are rolling out a programme to support inpatients and maternity patients who wish to try to quit smoking. The roll out will be completed by the end of March 2024. HHFT has signed up the NHS Smokefree Pledge and we have certain commitments around that – you can learn more about the NHS Smokefree Pledge here.
Our service covers two main patient groups – adult patients and maternity patients and is our new comprehensive secondary care treatment programme for tobacco addiction.
HHFT has employed 3 x Acute Tobacco Dependency Advisers and 2 x Maternity Tobacco Dependency Advisers. All inpatients who are smokers and all pregnant smokers who are referred to our service will be offered medication (nicotine replacement therapy) and behavioural support to help them in a quit attempt. It is now known that the best chance of stopping smoking is with support and medication.
Our ambition is to achieve a fundamental shift in day-to-day practice across all inpatient settings, to incorporate screening of smoking status on admission, the provision of brief intervention and pharmacotherapies, followed by effective on-going support for smoking cessation post discharge. The emphasis will be upon achieving consistency across organisations and specialties, so that patients that smoke recognise the importance of quitting and have a clear offer of support to do so.
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Dr Tahir Akbar, clinical director specialty medicine 1 |
| Dr Nick Williams, clinical lead and consultant - respiratory medicine | |
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Dr Emily Heiden, consultant in respiratory medicine and tobacco dependency service lead |
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Marek Cholewczuk, operational service manager - respiratory and general internal medicine |
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Melissa Stroud, deputy operational service manager – cardiology and respiratory |
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Nyararai Chiwashira (Nellie), clinical nurse specialist - respiratory |
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Giovanni Moneda, tobacco dependency advisor |
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Evan de Marco, tobacco dependency advisor |
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Faye Abbott, tobacco dependency advisor |
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Alina Sherwood, maternity tobacco dependency advisor |
| Alison Powell, maternity tobacco dependency ddvisor | |
| Lauren Brown, clinical nurse specialist, respiratory |
We would like to encourage all our frontline staff to refresh their VBA training – this is ‘Very Brief Advice’ for patients who are currently smokers. There is a very good short film on the NCSCT website which can be accessed here: 30 seconds to save a life (although this film is actually set in a GP setting).
Ask...Advise...Act is a training film which is set in a hospital setting which would also be good to link on our intranet page. ‘Ask, Advise, Act’ is what we are asking our staff to do:
ASK… ADVISE… ACT
- Ask the patient if they still smoke and have they considered stopping?
- Advise the patient did they know that the best way to quit is with medication and behavioural support & both of these are available free on the NHS?
- Act: Refer them!! Tick that they are a smoker on the FOC form (TAB 9, Qu 8)
and that automatically refers them to us. That’s IT!
