Delivering secondhand smoke interventions in primary care (DeSSIP)

• Research type

  Research Study

• Full title

  A qualitative study to explore primary care as a setting for the delivery of secondhand smoke harm reduction messages, in cases where adults and/or children are exposed to secondhand smoke in home environments.

• IRAS ID

  227297

• Contact name

  Laura L Jones

• Contact email

  l.l.jones@bham.ac.uk

• Duration of Study in the UK

  0 years, 11 months, 30 days

• Research summary

  Exposure to secondhand smoke (also known as passive smoking) increases the risk of death and disease in nonsmokers. It is therefore, important to help protect non-smokers, especially in the home, which is the main source of secondhand smoke exposure in the UK. Primary care healthcare professionals (e.g. general practitioners and practice nurses) see many smokers who may expose non-smokers who they live with to secondhand smoke (e.g. their children). Therefore, these healthcare professionals may be ideally placed to support smoking patients to reduce non-smokers' exposure to secondhand smoke in the home. Currently, we do not know if primary care healthcare professionals talk to their smoking patients about secondhand smoke, nor do we know their views on whether they should be having these discussions. We also do not know what smoking patients themselves think about having a discussion around secondhand smoke with their healthcare professional. Therefore, this study will explore primary care as a setting for the delivery of secondhand smoke harm reduction messages. In particular, we aim to explore:
  1. primary care healthcare professionals' thoughts and experiences around having discussions about secondhand smoke exposure
  2. what influences the choices that primary care healthcare professionals make in relation to secondhand smoke discussions
  3. smoking patients' views on the acceptability of, content of and how secondhand smoke-related discussions should be undertaken in the primary care setting

  To answer these questions, we plan to undertake a 11-month research study. We will talk to (interview) primary care healthcare professionals who work in Birmingham primary care (e.g. general practitioners, practice nurses, health visitors) and smokers who expose non-smokers to secondhand smoke in the home. We will use the results from this study to help inform the development of support packages (intervention) to support primary care healthcare professionals to help smokers to reduce non-smoker’s exposure to secondhand smoke in the home.

• REC name

  North East - York Research Ethics Committee

• REC reference

  17/NE/0164

• Date of REC Opinion

  18 May 2017

• REC opinion

  Favourable Opinion