To support healthcare professionals to embed screening and brief advice about alcohol and smoking into their routine practice.
Alcohol and Tobacco Brief Interventions
This elearning programme focuses on two brief interventions that are recommended by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence for delivery in secondary care:
- Very Brief Advice on Smoking, and
- Alcohol Brief Advice.
Alcohol misuse and smoking are among the most significant risk factors contributing to ill health. In England, more than one in four people drink alcohol at levels that increase their risk of health harm, and about 16% of people smoke (Public Health England). Many of these people are frequent users of hospitals, which provides a great opportunity for healthcare professionals to talk to them about their drinking and smoking, and how their health could benefit from making changes.
The programme is intended to provide healthcare professionals with the minimum level of knowledge and skill needed to confidently and effectively identify risk and provide brief advice to patients who smoke or who are drinking at a level that could be harming them.
The programme supports objectives of the NHS Five Year Forward View, including the need for a “radical upgrade in prevention” and to be “incentivising and supporting healthier behaviour”. It also supports staff training to meet requirements of the Preventing Ill Health by Risky Behaviours – alcohol and tobacco CQUIN (2017/2019 Commissioning for Quality and Innovation).
The elearning programme consists of four sessions:
- Introduction to treating and preventing ill health by risky behaviours – tobacco and alcohol
- Very Brief Advice on Smoking: ASK, ADVISE, ACT
- Alcohol Brief Advice: IDENTIFY and ADVISE or REFER
- Bringing it together for patients with multiple risk factors.
Each session will take approximately 15 minutes to complete and contains a short film, a recap of learning from the film, links to further information and resources, and a self-assessment to check learning. The films aim to make the case for why healthcare professionals in secondary care are well placed to deliver screening and brief advice interventions on smoking and alcohol, and to demonstrate how these can be easily integrated into routine practice, without taking up too much time.
A certificate is available for completion of the entire elearning programme. To obtain the certificate learners will need to pass the final self-assessment.
Alcohol and Tobacco Brief Interventions - elearning for healthcare