AWARDS


HEALTH PROMOTION supported by DEANS PHARMACY, WISHAW


With Wishaw in North Lanarkshire having some of the highest deprivation rates in Scotland, it is perhaps unsurprising that smoking levels in the area are far in excess of the national average. The young are particularly badly affected, with smoking in this age group rising at an alarming rate.


Aware of this increasing problem, the team at Deans Pharmacy in the town decided to engage with a number of community groups in order to facilitate smoking cessation services.


‘We felt,’ says pharmacist, Chris Johnstone, ‘that we needed to be more proactive with younger smokers in the belief that, by making interventions earlier in life, we could help youngsters escape the dangers of smoking that have plagued the community.


‘Through our partnership with Coltness High School, we identified a number of students who were regular smokers and started an engagement process with them. The first problem that we identified was that of children having access to cigarettes. In the last ten years, the cost of smoking has increased by 89 per cent. As these children did not have the income to buy cigarettes, they were having to find money, or share funds, in order to make purchases and therefore prioritise what they were spending their money on.


‘After discussions with the group of children who felt addicted to smoking, they advised they would all chip in for cigarettes and would regularly go without something to eat for lunch to be able to buy cigarettes. Any change remaining would be spent on cheap sweets to stave off hunger before they went home.


‘In addition to the smoking issue, this type of behaviour has further health implications as, not only are


these children smoking and bringing increased levels of carbon monoxide and excipients like tar into their bodies, they are also still growing and require a full complement of nutrition to do so successfully. The result is growth, which is far from optimised, as well as potential criminal behaviour in having to steal money from home or relatives in order to buy cigarettes.


‘Our first objective was to engage with those, who needed help to stop smoking, by giving them the details of the service, its confidentiality and the products and support which were available to them. This was achieved by speaking to the year group identified as having problems in small groups.


‘Our second objective was to educate on the risks of smoking, not solely from a lung cancer point of view, of which I’m sure many of the students were aware, but from a growth point of view. We measured the success of these sessions by collating feedback forms from the students. These


Deans Pharmacy, Wishaw celebrate with Ian Strachan, Chairman, National Pharmacy Association


showed us that the students felt the approach was more informative and less judgemental than sessions around smoking that had been delivered in the school.


‘We also offered students the chance to come back the following week if they were interested in undertaking the smoking cessation programme, or advised them that they should contact the pharmacy if they preferred to engage outside of school. We had 40 people return the following week. From discussions with this group, we ascertained that this represented the vast majority of pupils who smoked.


‘We held our weekly sessions with the pupils at Coltness High School and used younger members of our team to deliver these, as we believed that this was a better way of communicating with the students.


‘We were able to make a real difference to the number of school students smoking by targeting the concerns which were important


to them, rather than to the adult population.


‘Out of an initial 40 students who registered for the service, 32 made it to the end of the twelve weeks and were completely smoke free.


‘The headmaster commented that it was the “single biggest health improvement he had seen delivered through a school’ and that he was ‘astonished by the number of pupils that engaged and also managed to become smoke free’.


‘Not only did the initiative boost our smoking cessation services payment massively, we also saw an increase in smoking cessation consultations from the wider community as a result of the promotion of the school service. We also saw eMAS registrations increase as part of the project and used the opportunity to further promote community pharmacy as the first port of call for patients. All in all, we’re delighted with the outcomes of this initiative.’


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