Smoking cessation: Looking to the future of lung health in the UK

While the focus of primary care services is rightly on the delivery of Covid-19 vaccinations it’s important we don’t lose sight of our longer term ambitions for improving the nations lung health. The recent report from Asthma UK and the British Lung Foundation, A Breath of Fresh Air, highlights the training needs of GPs across the UK to hone their Very Brief Advice for smoking cessation skills. This quick to deliver intervention can be the first step towards prompting a quit attempt but it needs to be learned and then ingrained as a core healthcare competency and ultimately delivered regularly and consistently. Once we begin to emerge from the Covid-19 pandemic and attention returns to long-term lung health issues PCRS have a range of materials to support you in delivering smoking cessation services including VBA.

PCRS provides a range of materials to support you in delivering VBA for smoking cessation on the PCRS Tobacco dependency page, including our pragmatic guide for primary care .