The need to promote healthy living and smoking cessation is important, but where does pharmacy's role lie in this?
“No smoking day” (9 March) has been featured in The Journal (PJ, 19 February 2011, p206) and I, as a preregistration trainee, ran a small health promotion campaign highlighting the dangers of smoking and the help available. This provided a wonderful opportunity to spend time with patients discussing the smoking cessation service we offer in store, as well as the national help available.
I based myself within the local health centre for the day picking up the “passing trade” to encourage a few people to consider quitting smoking. Being a preregistration trainee, this was easy. I had a quick chat with my tutor, ordered some supplies and made a note on the calendar. However, I wonder how easy this is for a sole pharmacist in a busy branch and is it a priority to do so?
Any preregistration trainee will be able to tell you about the need to demonstrate “promotion and support [of] healthy lifestyles and [to] prevent disease” to acquire all the necessary standards for passing the year.
However, pharmacists must consider this, too, since the General Pharmaceutical Council’s “Standards of conduct, ethics and performance” requires pharmacists to “promote the health of patients and the public”. However, achieving this may seem, at times, a momentous task.
With one in six annual deaths in the UK being attributed to smoking, the need to promote healthy living and smoking cessation is important, but where does pharmacy’s role lie in this?
While I was out campaigning, a doctor told me how pleased he was to see community pharmacy taking an active role in smoking cessation and how important it is that health professionals work together to improve patient care. This was most gratifying to hear and encourages optimism for the new GP consortia and pharmacy’s role within this system.
Providing smoking cessation services in community pharmacies is a way to increase patient access to a vital service and provide a way to promote public health. National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence guidance states that “community pharmacies serve local communities and have the potential to reach and treat large numbers of people . . . they also have an important role to play in local education and communication campaigns”.
The NHS is changing. Perhaps taking health promotion (through the provision of services and the advertising that goes with them) by the horns is a task for pharmacy. A cost-effectiveness review conducted in 2001 found that smoking cessation can result in a cost of £601 per life year saved between the ages of 35-44, a figure that sounds promising, especially when considering the cost is an admitted overestimate.
Of course, providing services can be time-consuming and smoking cessation may require some in-depth conversations. Such services do not encourage or thrive with a quick discussion and out-of-the-door approach.
While running a busy branch, the time for such services cannot always seem a priority. However, given both the effectiveness of the scheme and the tightening of the financial belt, can the profession afford not to engage with such services?
It is vital to show the Government and the public that pharmacists do more than count pills and we are a vital part of a multidisciplinary healthcare team. What better way to do so than to provide a cost-effective, much needed service that has the potential to reach all types of people?
Providing services to communities where we are based is beneficial to the profession, the NHS and the public. With smoking cessation proving so effective, what other services should the profession take on next?
Nicholas Thayer is a preregistration trainee at The Co-operative, Church View, Nantwich
