4 interaction dynamics occurred in telephone counselling for smoking cessation
Q What are the optimal characteristics of proactive telephone support as a smoking cessation intervention?
DESIGN
Qualitative study within a randomised controlled trial.
SETTING
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
PARTICIPANTS
A sample of 56 consecutively enrolled patients (mean age 50 y, 55% women, mean 31 y smoking) from a surgical preassessment clinic who were in the intervention group of a randomised controlled trial evaluating proactive smoking cessation telephone counselling by 8 trained nurses. Patients were self identified smokers, had elective surgery scheduled within 12 weeks after assessment, and had an anticipated hospital stay ⩾24 hours after surgery.
METHODS
All telephone counselling intervention calls for the 56 postoperative patients were tape recorded (368 completed calls, mean 6.2 min/call, range 1–50 min), with the number of calls per patient ranging from 2–9. The calls were transcribed verbatim and checked for accuracy. Data analysis was done using the constant comparative method.
MAIN FINDINGS
The interaction dynamics that occurred …
