Smoking cessation support in community pharmacies: Is the association of smoking and eye disease an additional tool to increase uptake?

Objective: Community pharmacists have a central role in provision of smoking-cessation support. Evidence is growing that tobacco smoking is associated with development and progression of several potentially blinding eye diseases. As part of an ongoing programme of raising awareness of this link, we investigated whether community pharmacists are aware of this association and incorporate relevant advice into their smoking-cessation guidance. Setting: Two-thousand and eighty community pharmacists in north west England, UK. Method: A postal self-completion questionnaire asked pharmacists about their current practice with regard to smoking habits of their clients. Data were extracted and entered onto a database for statistical analyses. Key findings: The response rate was 50.5%; 685 (65.2%) pharmacists asked clients about smoking habits; the most common situation was when clients complained of respiratory symptoms. Of these pharmacists, 52.7% always/usually recommended that smokers should stop and 37.2% always/usually assessed motivation to succeed. Help provided by pharmacists included brief advice on smoking cessation, leaflets, more structured support, referral to smoking-cessation services, and nicotine replacement therapies. The most common reason why pharmacists did not ask about smoking was lack of time (83.1%); 52.0% were aware of the causal association of smoking with eye disease, and 19.8% of those who asked about smoking habits mentioned this association when discussing smoking cessation. Conclusion: Our study shows that community pharmacists are actively involved in smoking cessation. Many pharmacists are aware of the causal association between smoking and eye disease, but few are actively counselling patients about the eye heath risks of smoking. Community pharmacists could include this information in their advice to clients who smoke, as an additional means to promote smoking cessation. © 2008 The Authors.