Evaluation On The Effect Of Smoking Cessation Skills Training For Medical Staff

Objective: At present,there are more than 300 million smokers in China,and medical staff play a very important role in smoking cessation service.However,medical staff are lack of knowledge about quitting smoking and seldom use standard smoking cessation methods in clinical practice.As the most popular social media application in China,WeChat is increasingly used in the health care industry to promote public health.This study intends to conduct online training for medical staff through WeChat,in order to explore whether it can improve medical staff’s knowledge of quitting smoking and the application of standard smoking cessation interventions in their work.Methods: This study was a randomized controlled trial.Medical staff were recruited from different levels of medical institutions across the country,randomly divided into the intervention group or the control group and distributed the same paper-based training materials(Smoking cessation: theory and practice).The intervention group regularly received the key contents and online video links of the training from WeChat,and completed the training within 8 weeks.While the control group only received regular messages thanking for their participation and reminding them to learn the training materials on their own within 8weeks.Participants who completed the 8-week training were included in the final analysis,their knowledge of quitting smoking were recorded by electronic questionnaire,and their application of various smoking cessation interventions in their work was followed-up for 4 weeks after completing the training.The primary outcome was the application rate of various smoking cessation interventions in their work between the two groups,and the secondary outcomes were the mastery rate of each part of the smoking cessation knowledge between the two groups and the proportion of medical staff who provide smoking cessation interventions to smoking patients after training.The study data adopted the principle of intention-to-treat analysis,and all participants were retained in the original grouping for analysis.Results: A total of 1887 medical staff were recruited,and finally1028 medical staff from 29 provinces were included from October 2020 to October 2021,and were randomly assigned to the intervention group(n= 509)or the control group(n = 519).A total of 940(91.4%)participants completed the electronic questionnaire,813(79.1%)participants completed the 4-week follow-up,and 780(75.9%)participants completed the whole study.1.Knowledge of quitting smoking.The mastery rate of quitting knowledge in the two groups was significantly higher after training than that before training(p<0.01).After training,the differences in the knowledge of quitting smoking between the two groups were only observed in the two parts of "preparation for quitting smoking" and "non-drug treatment of quitting smoking",and the intervention group had a higher mastery rate(p<0.05).On the whole,the mastery rate of smoking cessation knowledge of all participants after training was higher than that before training,and the difference was statistically significant(p<0.01).2.The clinical application of smoking cessation interventions.After training,the proportion of medical staff who provided smoking cessation interventions for patients in the intervention group was 55.0%(280/509),which was higher than that in the control group(51.3%,266/519),but the difference between groups did not reach statistical significance(p=0.227).Four weeks after training,the application rates of smoking cessation interventions in the two groups were significantly higher than those before training,and the differences were statistically significant(p<0.01).Before and after training,there were no significant difference in the application rates of various smoking cessation interventions between the two groups(p>0.05).On the whole,the application rates of various smoking cessation interventions among all participants during 4-week follow-up were higher than those before training,and the difference were statistically significant(p<0.01).3.After training,the medical staff who provided smoking cessation intervention for smoking patients had a higher rate of smoking cessation knowledge than those did not(p<0.01),and the difference was statistically significant(p<0.01).4.Characteristics of medical staff who carried out smoking cessation interventions.The general demographic data and work information were compared between medical staff who provided smoking cessation intervention in their work and those who did not,and the results showed that there were statistical differences between the two groups in gender,age,professional title,working years and work department(p<0.01).The results of Multivariate Logistic Regression Analysis showed that female,psychiatric workers and those with primary or intermediate professional titles were more likely to provide smoking cessation interventions for smoking patients after training.Conclusion: 1.Both WeChat-based online training and just reminding medical staff to learn training materials by themselves can improve medical staff’s mastery of smoking cessation knowledge and the application rate of standard smoking cessation practice in their work.2.WeChat-based online training is more beneficial for medical staff to master the knowledge of quitting smoking in some aspects,but it has no advantage in improving the application of standard smoking cessation interventions at work compared with regularly reminding them to learn training materials.3.The medical staff who carried out smoking cessation intervention for smoking patients after training acquired better knowledge of quitting smoking.4.Females,psychiatrists,and those with junior or intermediate titles were more likely to provide smoking cessation interventions to smoking patients after training.