Preparing Undergraduate Nurses to Provide Smoking Cessation Advice and Help‪.‬

Background Tobacco smoking is the major preventable cause of death in New Zealand. Some 5,000 people die annually from smoking or exposure to second-hand smoke (Ministry of Health, 2007a). In 2009 one in Ave people aged 15 to 64 years smoked (Ministry of Health, 2010b). Most people (83.3%) who smoke regret starting (Wilson, Edwards, & Weerasekera, 2009). Three out of five (59%) who currently smoke have tried to quit in the past Ave years (Ministry of Health, 2009d). It is reasonable to expect that more smokers will quit successfully if nurses deliver evidence-based smoking cessation interventions. Nurses can provide effective advice for people stopping smoking, and given the size of the nursing workforce ( 40,000) the reach is potentially wide (Ministry of Health, 2009b; Rice & Stead, 2008). However despite this potential effect, fewer than half of New Zealand nurses reported they were trained to provide smoking cessation advice and help (Wong et al., 2007). The 2007 New Zealand Smoking Cessation Guidelines recommended a brief intervention structured around the memory aid ABC: Ask, Brief advice and Cessation support (Ministry of Health, 2007a). The ABC approach is based on clinical trials demonstrating the efficacy of behavioural and pharmacological support for quitting smoking (Ministry of Health, 2008). It replaces the Five A's approach (Ask, Advise, Assess, Assist, Arrange), based on the Transtheoretical Model of Behaviour Change proposed by Prochaska and DiClemente (1982), and recommended in the 2002 Smoking Cessation Guidelines (National Advisory Committee on Health and Disability, 2002). While the Stages of Change approach is widely used in education to promote behaviour change, it has been discredited for smoking cessation (Littell & Girvin, 2002; West, 2005; West & Hardy, 2006).