Teaching Residents how to Effectively Prescribe Nicotine Replacement Therapy on the Clinical Teaching Unit

Residents and medical students identified a lack of knowledge regarding Nicotine Replacement Therapy (NRT) as a barrier to smoking cessation counselling. We hypothesized that a teaching session on NRT during an inpatient Internal Medicine rotation would increase learner comfort in prescribing these products. Medical trainees on the Internal Medicine Clinical Teaching Unit (CTU) attended a teaching session during week 4 of an 8-week rotation. Pharmacy records from the 8-week period were retrospectively analyzed to determine NRT prescribing behaviour. Pre-intervention, 5.8% (13/225) of new admissions received a NRT prescription. Post-intervention, 17% (31/182) of new admissions received a NRT prescription. Using a Fisher’s exact test, the percentage of new admissions that received a prescription was significantly different (p<0.001) between the pre- and post-intervention time frames. This data suggests that integrating education on NRT into CTU teaching can significantly alter prescribing behaviour and improve access to NRT for patients who need it.

Teaching Residents how to Effectively Prescribe Nicotine Replacement Therapy on the Clinical Teaching Unit Journal Articles