National Non-Smoking Week underway in Lethbridge, and across the country

Research has demonstrated that the strongest approach to smoking cessation is to combine quit-medication with quit counselling.

In Alberta, Siemens says the government has really put its best foot forward in offering pharmacists funding to spend time with patients one-on-one in an office setting.

“Now they can spend a little bit more time trying to figure out the main reasons people smoke, what their triggers are, what we can use to deal with it and provide on-going support,” he continued. “The government will actually pay for some of the time that we can spend with a patient one-on-one.”

It’s a unique opportunity, and Siemans says there’s really no cost to a patient to just do an assessment to see what they’ve tried before, what’s worked, what hasn’t, and what will it affect their current medications.

“As well as whether or not it will be covered, a lot of insurance plans will pay for various smoking cessation aides which many patients aren’t even aware of,” Siemens added.

As medication experts within the broader health care team, pharmacists are well-suited to advise patients about selecting a nicotine replacement therapy.

In addition to providing advice about over-the-counter options, pharmacists in Alberta with additional prescribing authorization can prescribe oral medications such as Champix and Zyban.

“When it comes to nicotine addiction, various methods have been tried over the years by governments and health professionals alike. I think most patients know of the detriments to their health from smoking, and yet the smoking rates across Canada aren’t going down as much as we’d like. Smoking has always been a very difficult addiction to deal with,” Siemens said.

He’s heard a lot of people offer some false ideas about somebody that smokes.

“They’ll say oh it’s easy just quit, well it’s not easy. Nicotine is highly addictive, and the body will alter the perceptions of a smoker to make them want to continue smoking. It’s a better approach to work with your health care provider to try to quit smoking, because as bad as the health benefits are smoking is still an attractive thing to people,” Siemens stated.

Siemens believes the issue is a problem especially for younger Albertans, and young people across Canada.

“Young kids don’t see the long-term complications of a drug until it’s at the point where it’s really hard to get off. They smoke because they think it’s the coolest thing to do, or their friends have taken up smoking so now they feel like they must. Unfortunately, anything that doesn’t adversely affect people immediately they tend to discount the overall harm they’re doing to themselves,” Siemens said.

Pharmacists can also provide practical tips and advice to help people reduce/quit tobacco and develop personalized quit plans to help people stop smoking.

“We can put all the pictures on smoke packages, and we can do all the warnings we want, but we still have people smoking,” Siemens continued. “For various reasons, their health being a major one, we need to help these people get off this really nasty habit.”

A lot of times smoking cessation takes people an average of about five attempts, real solid attempts, to be smoke free.

Siemens says relapse is common, but that the provincial government has been trying to make it harder for people to be able to smoke in public.

“That’s a positive step, but at the end of the day, it really is a personal approach. Right now, we’re combining some different medications to help with smoking cessation where we used to use one. There’s also reduce to quit strategies which can help too,” Siemens said, adding an excellent website to go to in Alberta is AlbertaQuits.ca.

“There’s resources and support tools available for both professionals and patients, a lot of stuff is out there but a lot of people just don’t know it is.”

by Aaron Mahoney (@Mahones93 on Twitter)

National Non-Smoking Week underway in Lethbridge, and across the country

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