Social workers can help older smokers
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Getting older smokers to quit can be a tough order, but enlisting social workers in the battle could help, a new study suggests.
Even in old age, quitting smoking can have health benefits, but elderly smokers are less likely to receive smoking cessation counseling than their younger counterparts. One of the obstacles is simply reaching older adults who smoke, according to the authors of the new study.
Because social workers are already commonly in contact with elderly people, the researchers investigated whether social workers could be trained to provide smoking cessation counseling to their clients.
The training was brief, just 9 hours altogether, lead study author Dr. Gabriel M. Leung, of the University of Hong Kong, told Reuters Health, but it was also carefully designed. The 177 social workers in the study learned about the health effects of smoking, ways to kick the habit, and how to give their clients advice on quitting.
Over the next year, the researchers found that the social workers’ knowledge about smoking and smoking cessation improved. The social workers also reported that they more often asked their clients about their smoking habits and gave them assistance on how to quit, Leung’s group reports in the medical journal Chest.
Leung said the next phase of the research, soon to be published, will show whether the social workers were actually able to get some of their clients to quit smoking.
The findings suggest that a range of professionals, other than traditional healthcare workers, could also help older adults give up smoking, according to Leung. Home care aides, “Meals-on-Wheels” volunteers, and workers at senior centers, he said, could all potentially be trained to give some sort of smoking cessation help—whether that means simply referring older adults to smoking cessation programs or actually counseling them.
“I think we can consider ‘piggy-backing’ smoking cessation to other services that older adults commonly receive,” Leung said.
SOURCE: Chest, April 2007.
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