There is a good chance that as a travel nurse, you have encountered a patient who smokes. Although public health efforts to cut down smoking rates have led to a major decrease in cigarette use, a sizable percentage of the patients you see likely smokes.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about one in five U.S. adults (46.6 million people) smoke, and four out of 10 nonsmokers and one out of two kids in the U.S. are exposed to secondhand smoke. Smoking cigarettes is also the leading cause of preventable death in the U.S.
Understanding your patients who smoke
It's very important as a travel nurse to encourage your patients to avoid tobacco if they don't smoke, and urge smokers to quit. According to the World Health Organization, there are five stages that smokers can be grouped in with it comes to smoking cessation, which are as follows:
- Pre-contemplation: This is a stage when a person is currently smoking and has no plans to stop.
- Contemplation: Contemplation occurs when a patient is considering giving up cigarettes, but has no plans or strategy for moving forward with this decision.
- Preparation: A patient has scaled back on his or her smoking habits (such as reducing the amount of cigarettes he or she smokes in a day) or is mentally ready to make serious changes to his or her lifestyle in order to quit.
- Active: Your patient is already in the process of quitting, but has lapsed several times.
- Maintenance: This is a person that has been tobacco-free for six months or more, but requires counseling or other measures to continue to stay away from tobacco.
Understanding where your patients fall into these categories can give travel nurses the mindset they need to move forward. Nurses in general are going to be on the "front lines" of tobacco use prevention, according to Maryland's Tobacco Resource Centers, so they will need to be informed about the types of interventions that are suitable for patients in these various stages. There are several ways to go about doing this, and it usually requires a holistic approach to really get the root of the problem and help your patients quit.
Be a source of information: Many of the patients you encounter are aware of smoking's dangers and want to quit. Most people simply don't know where to begin and need advice on how to get started. This means in most cases, they do not need to join a program, but rather need to work with their medical professional to find out what treatment plan best suits their needs.
Create a support system: It is definitely up to the smoker to find the will to quit. However, the patients' friends and family are going to be very instrumental in helping them stop as well. It's important let these individuals know that the home needs to be smoke-free, that it's important to celebrate small victories along the way for encouragement and to refrain from scolding or being judgmental if they lapse.