Designing a Smoking Cessation Program

Smoking Cessation Program: An Overview When creating a smoking cessation program after flagging patients as in need of treatment, it is important to use finite resources as wisely as possible. Resources are finite for both the program designer and the patient in terms of time and money. One way create a better program is to conduct a comprehensive evaluation of effective smoking cessation programs to see what 'worked' and what did not. Studies have shown that one-on-one counseling is very effective in helping smokers quit.

Smokers can discuss replacing smoking with more positive coping mechanisms such as exercise and how to emotionally deal with the inevitable 'slip ups' which occur. Counselors should be trained to give specific support to addicts, who will almost inevitably relapse as they struggle with negative and ambivalent emotions about quitting. The proposed program would match smokers with a counselor with whom they would meet weekly (either in person or over the phone, depending on what was convenient) to discuss goals and the quitting process.

According to Michael Fiore, a professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and founder of the school's Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention, in all effective programs "what they'll do is give you coaching -- one-on-one personalized, individualized coaching to help you to quit. And that has been shown to substantially quit rates" (O'Callaghan 2009).

Counselors would be matched with patients based upon age, ethnicity, personality, and other factors which could make the relationship between the two individuals 'mesh.' As well as individual support, peer support can be very helpful as well. The counselor would offer to connect the participant to support groups for smokers. These may encompass 12-step programs, modeled along the lines of Smoker's Anonymous. However not all people attempting to quit smoking have enough time to go to support groups and individual counselling.

They can use the more time-friendly option of going to online group therapy to enhance the individual counseling. The advantage of making individualized counseling the core of the program is that it allows the components to be tailored to the individual needs of the smoker: a young person in a stressful job where smoking is an accepted part of the workplace may have different psychological and physical needs than a senior who has been smoking the duration of his or her life and is socially isolated.

To supplement support groups, many smokers find certain medications helpful to enhance their efforts. "There are five nicotine medicines: the gum, the patch, the lozenge, the nasal spray and the inhaler. And then there are two prescription pills: Bupropion, some people know it by the brand name Zyban, and the other is called Varenicline, which people may know by the brand name Chantix" (O'Callaghan 2009).

With a plethora of options, once again, the smoker can benefit from support from a counselor to make the best selection of medications for his or her personal needs. The rationale behind using such drugs is that it is very, very difficult to quit smoking 'cold turkey' because of the powerful effects of nicotine. "Cigarettes contain 4,000 chemicals, of which about 40 are carcinogens, which can cause cancer. Nicotine is only one of 4,000" (O'Callaghan 2009).

Thus, " what the idea is in designing these medications is that you get rid of your cigarettes with those 4,000 chemicals, you use nicotine as a bridge to then get to a point where you're using no nicotine and no cigarettes" (O'Callaghan 2009). The use of such medications reflect the powerful psychological component of cigarette addiction. For many people, the act of smoking itself is intoxicating: by blunting the physical withdrawal symptoms, quitting smoking becomes less painful. However, these medications are not designed to be used long-term.

"5% of people who successfully quit with nicotine products, but end up using them long-term" and once again, the goal of using a counselor is to avoid addiction to smoking cessation products as well as smoking itself (O'Callaghan 2009). The program will primarily be structured through one-on-one counselling.