Tobacco use is a leading cause of preventable death in the U.S., and despite its known health hazards many individuals continue use. In fact, use may increasing among certain demographic groups, and the national per capita consumption of smokeless tobacco has tripled in the past several decades. Nonetheless, a large proportion of smokers would like to quit smoking but are not advised to do so by their physicians. Clinicians, on the other hand, note that a major impediment to successfully counseling patients to quit using tobacco is a lack of training. Indeed, national research has documented that US medical schools are deficient in adequately preparing graduates to deal with tobacco dependence. Explicit national guidelines are available to train physicians in tobacco cessation. In addition, patients centered methods have been developed to train medical students in smoking cessation. Using a combination of these guidelines, methods, standardized patient instructors, role playing, and specific instruction, medical educators have shown that smoking cessation training can be easily inserted into medical school curricula and that students retain this information for the near term. Lacking in these tobacco educational interventions, however, have been attempts: 1) to integrate tobacco dependence throughout all 4 years of medical school curricula; 2) to include specific training in smokeless tobacco use and cessation given this product's unique addictive and epidemiology characteristics; and 3) to develop culturally relevant tobacco cessation materials for health care providers. To address these gaps in medical school curricula on tobacco cessation, nationally, we propose: 1) to develop a comprehensive web-based and culturally relevant tobacco cessation curriculum that is highly portable; 2) to implement the tobacco cessation curriculum within all four years of the medical school curricula; and 3) to evaluate the tobacco cessation curriculum through process, impact, and outcome evaluations. The ultimate goal will be to develop a highly portable tobacco cessation curriculum that can be used a variety of educational settings.
| Spangler, John; Foley, Kristie Long; Crandall, Sonia et al. (2009) Implementing smokeless tobacco instruction into medical student education: addressing the gap. Teach Learn Med 21:33-7 |
