The experience of general practitioners with Very Brief Advice in the treatment of tobacco addiction

Although tobacco smoking is the world’s most important preventable cause of many chronic diseases (including COPD and asthma) and premature death, many physicians do not routinely apply smoking cessation in the daily health care of their patients. Two widely felt important concerns of physicians are that smoking cessation as part of a treatment is time-consuming and may jeopardize their relationship with patients. Very Brief Advice (VBA) is a non-confrontational method, which could assist general practitioners (GPs) as a simple, quick first step in getting patients to stop smoking. In this study, we investigated the opinions and experiences of GPs with VBA in their routine care in two rounds of telephone interviews with 19 GPs. The interviews were recorded and transcribed and subsequently analysed with NVivo12. We observed that the GPs had a very positive experience with using VBA. They found the method to be efficient as to the time involved, patient-friendly and easy to implement.