ABSTRACT
In 1996, the Cochrane review ‘The effectiveness of physician advice to aid smoking cessation’ was published (Silagy and Ketteridge 1996). 1 Based on a meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials, it found that brief advice to stop smoking from a physician led to a slight increase in quit rates (between 1 and 2 per cent) at the population level. These findings were widely disseminated, with organisations such as the National Institute for Health Care Excellence in the United Kingdom, the Office of the Surgeon General in the USA, Australia’s Department of Health and Ageing, and Health Canada all formally recommending such interventions as standard ‘good practice’ for physicians (Bell et al. 2012).
