Health Discovery: Smokers Fail to Talk to Doctors About Quitting

Many patients who want to stop smoking don’t talk to their primary care providers about it. And health care professionals often don’t bring up the subject either, a new study concludes.

Smoking is the number one cause of preventable disease and death in the United States, and 70 percent of smokers say they want to quit. Are you one of them but don’t know where to start?

According to a study released on April 1 by the American Legacy Foundation, a Washington-based nonprofit organization founded to address the nation’s tobacco epidemic, you may have been ignoring a ready resource.

“We found that one in five [21 percent] of our respondents never discussed their smoking with their health care professional,” says Cheryl Healton, president and CEO of the foundation, which commissioned Harris Interactive to conduct the online survey of 1,000 smokers. The survey was supported by Pfizer Inc., which makes a drug to help people stop smoking.

According to the study, health care professionals are not proactive, even when the subject is broached. “Over half of the participants in the survey—56 percent—were not given any information about medications to help them quit smoking, and 80 percent were not provided with information about cessation counseling,” Healton says.

“This study exposes the conflict that smokers and health care providers have,” says Thomas Glynn, director of cancer science and trends at the American Cancer Society. “Smokers who want to stop are too embarrassed or don’t know how to ask their health care professional. And on the other hand, medical professionals know they should talk to their smoking patients but don’t feel skilled enough to initiate the discussion.”

This is bad news for smokers who want to stop. “Current science supports the fact that the best way to quit is to have a combination of nicotine replacement therapy with some counseling component,” says American Legacy’s Healton.

Jerry Englert is a good example. The 58-year old IT consultant from Hale, Mo., decided to quit smoking last year. “Discussing the options and possible side effects with my doctor took the fear factor out of the process,” he says. His physician prescribed a medication and told Englert to participate in an online support group. The combination worked. Englert has been a nonsmoker for more than a year.

Cathie Gandel is a freelance writer based in New York.