ABSTRACT
Despite smoking being the leading cause of preventable deaths in the United States, smoking cessation is not adequately addressed in health care practice. Approximately 30% of providers address smoking as part of routine health care (Schroeder, 2005). As patient loads increase and time available per individual patient shrinks, clinicians are often forced to address problems that they consider more pressing, which often leads to the exclusion of smoking from the discussion. In part, however, failure to address tobacco use could be affected by training patterns. For example, Prochaska and colleagues report that the majority of psychiatry students and residents are ill prepared to adequately treat smoking in their practices (Prochaska, Fromont, & Hall, 2005; Prochaska, Fromont, Louie, Jacobs, & Hall, 2006). The combination of inadequate training and constraints of clinical practice result in failure to initiate the smoking cessation process, which may be one of the most important interventions for health maintenance.
