East Belfast Community Development Agency

Brief intervention training in recent years have been directed toward providing health care professionals with the necessary knowledge and skills to effectively counsel patients about stopping smoking. However because of increased pressure of work the opportunity doesn’t often arise.  Therefore ‘Brief Intervention Training’ was provided to EBCDA community health workers and lay health volunteers to help widen out the capacity of the sector to support stop smoking conversations with the hard to reach community.  Paul O’Kane of Belfast Trust Health Improvement Department provided this training and used his experience of being based at Belfast City Hospital to deliver an interactive session using handsets and handouts with information and guidance.  The stopping process requires only a few minutes during the course of an interaction. Many things can motivate an individual to quit smoking and events in the community provide a key “window of opportunity” Training highlighted that the conversation to explore this topic is best initiated by asking the person to talk about his or her current state of health.  It was emphasised that for most people, general statements like “smoking is bad for you” or “smoking will kill you” are less effective and may come across as nagging. Therefore, the educational component of this training focused on reviewing people’s past quit attempts and examining what type of behaviour change techniques did the person use in the past? how did the person use the smoking-cessation medication of choice? if the person did not make any behaviour changes or use a medication, why not?  Fortunately there is a multitude of referral sources available to tobacco users but this short training course helped to improve knowledge and skills level of participants.

For more information contact Alan on This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or 9045 1512.