Sree T. Sucharitha1, Pradeep Rangasamy2, Vaishikaa R.3, Balaji S.M.4, Bindu T.5, Gunasekaran N.6
BACKGROUND
Majority of smokers are aware of health consequences due to smoking but
reported inability to quit smoking in multiple studies. Reasons attributed to
continued smoking include multiple causes like addiction, habit and stress, as well
as face-valid causes such as disease, personality problems, weakness of character,
etc. Tobacco cessation services promoted by World Health Organization (WHO)
are typically to be initiated by the service provider and include brief opportunistic
assessment for smoking cessation widely known as 5A’ and 5R’s for brief
assessment. Health interventions are identified by WHO as an effective way to
enhance the promotion of tobacco cessation as only three percent of smokers
manage to quit without help of intervention. This study explored the awareness of
smart phone apps for smoking cessation among private healthcare providers in
Chennai.
METHODS
A qualitative, explorative study through one-on-one, personal interviews among
36 randomly approached and consenting healthcare providers primarily providing
tobacco related health care services including dentists, psychiatrists, ear – nose -
throat surgeons, general medicine, respiratory medicine, surgeons and
obstetricians at six private teaching medical institutes was conducted from July
2020 to October 2020 in Chennai.
RESULTS
The results showed that majority of the healthcare providers lack awareness of
smart phone-based apps for smoking cessation. However, a very small minority3
who were aware were limited by social determinants of health of the clients such
as perceived poor digital literacy, unaffordability of internet packages to
recommend them.
CONCLUSIONS
The healthcare providers from various fields lacked the awareness of smart phone
apps aiding with smoking cessation with the exception of a minor few3 who
acknowledged their existence but were engaged very minimally with these
modalities.
