Article

Initiative Challenges Nurses and Nursing Student to Stop Smoking
Linda Sarna, RN, DNSc, AOCN^®
Professor, School of Nursing at the University of California, Los Angeles
Stella Bialous, RN, DrPH President, Tobacco Policy International

The Tobacco Free Nurses Initiative is the first national program to address the needs of nurses and nursing students in all matters regarding tobacco control. The Web site (www.tobaccofreenurses.org) provides a range of resources and contains a link to an Internet cessation program, designed specifically for nurses and nursing students who smoke, called Nurses Quitnet. The first 5,000 nurses who visit the site will be offered (at no cost) the full range of premium services for one year.

Sarna and Bialous

Tobacco is the United States’ and the world’s leading cause of preventable and premature deaths and is responsible for one in three deaths resulting from cancer. Tobacco kills five million people every year and is projected to kill 10 million people annually by 2030 if no interventions are made. More people worldwide are expected to die from tobacco-related illnesses during the next 30 years than from AIDS, automobile accidents, maternal mortality, homicide, and suicide combined.

Tobacco use and exposure to secondhand smoke are causally related to a wide variety of cancers, including cancers of the lung, oral cavity, pharynx and larynx, esophagus, stomach, bladder, colon, pancreas, cervix, and kidney, as well as acute myeloid leukemia. Tobacco cessation decreases the risk of cancer and other conditions that affect quality of life. As smoking patterns have changed, tobacco-attributable cancers such as lung cancer have increased in impoverished and poorly educated people as well as in ethnic minority communities. Every day, oncology nurses see the devastation and suffering from tobacco-attributable cancers experienced by individuals, families, communities, and society at large.

Increasing numbers of studies support the efficacy of nurses in effective smoking cessation interventions. Nurses are in key positions to implement tobacco use prevention and cessation strategies and assist individuals and families in reducing exposure to secondhand smoke. However, many barriers limit implementation of cessation in clinical practice, including lack of education and skills and smoking by nurses. The Tobacco Free Nurses Initiative hopes to remove these barriers.

Historically, many nursing curricula have not provided adequate information about tobacco health effects, including exposure to secondhand smoke, prevention of tobacco use, scientifically based strategies for tobacco cessation, or clinical practice opportunities to ensure that all students are competent in tobacco control. The principal investigators for this project, Linda Sarna, RN, DNSc, AOCN^®, professor in the School of Nursing at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Stella Bialous, RN, DrPH, president of Tobacco Policy International, hope that this Web site will help all nurses and nursing students to become knowledgeable about the many roles that nurses can play in tobacco control and help nurses to quit if they are ready.

Bibliography
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Wewers, M.E., Kidd, K., Armbruster, D., & Sarna, L. (2004). Tobacco dependence curricula in U.S. baccalaureate and graduate nursing education. Nurse Outlook, 52(2), 95–101.