The setting for the current program is a rural community in which many of the constituents smoke. The program is designed to address the issue of smoking as an avoidable cause of illness and encourage members of the community to cease the practice. One of the goals of Healthy People 2000 is to increase to 75 percent the percentage of primary healthcare workers who routinely advise patients to stop smoking (Neely, 2004). The Surgeon General of the United States has said that the use of tobacco is the single largest preventable cause of illness and death in the United States.
The population to be initiated into the program are adults attending an outpatient clinic in Far Hills, Nebraska, a town with a population of 10,000 people. It is a farming community and many people use the clinic as an emergency room for accidents and injuries sustained on the farms because there is no local hospital. Most of the people are heavy smokers, despite the availability of radio, television and printed materials warning of the dangers of smoking and the negative health consequences. Patients attending the clinic will be asked to fill out a questionnaire based on the National Cancer Institute's manual on How To Help Your Patient Stop Smoking. The questionnaire consists of five pages with 37 questions following the NCI guidelines for counseling for stopping smoking. The data will be analyzed and descriptive statistics used to organize and present the results.
Because of the prevalence of smoking in this community, and the fact that the nurses in the clinic are the ones who usually spend the most time with the patients, it was decided that they were in an ideal position to conduct this program. They are in a position to conduct the surveys, and to encourage the patients to follow the guidelines for giving up smoking. They can provide encouragement and support and answer any questions the patients may have concerning the problems they enc...