ABSTRACT
Who will provide inpatient tobacco cessation services is a decision that must be made. There are three basic approaches to guide decisions about who will provide the inpatient tobacco cessation program. We refer to the three approaches as the decentralized clinician approach, the centralized counselor approach, and the hybrid approach. The decentralized clinician approach is one in which all clinicians are responsible for identifying among their patients those who use tobacco, and then intervening by providing tobacco cessation services. The centralized counselor approach is the approach in which a dedicated position is created for a tobacco cessation counselor who has the responsibility for identifying all hospitalized patients who use tobacco and intervening with tobacco cessation services. The hybrid approach is a combination of the decentralized clinician and centralized counselor approaches—all clinicians are responsible for at least minimally intervening with their own patients who use tobacco and a tobacco cessation counselor is available to provide more in-depth education and counseling.
