Medical College Clinic Turns Smokers into Quitters

People who quit smoking are likely to live longer, healthier lives, to have healthier children, to have more energy and breathe easier, and to have a lower risk of heart attack, stroke and cancer. The economic benefits are also clear: smoking one pack of cigarettes per day at $3 per pack costs about $1,100 each year.

Approximately 70% of smokers report that they want to quit, and the Smoking Cessation Clinic at the Medical College of Wisconsin provides evidence-based, low-cost, individualized services tailored to help them.

“Developing effective strategies to stop and maintain abstinence from smoking is the primary goal of this clinic,” says Jo M. Weis, PhD, Clinical Director of the Smoking Cessation Clinic and Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the Medical College. Carlyle H. Chan, MD, Professor of Psychiatry at the Medical College, is the clinic’s Medical Director.

“The Medical College program,” Dr. Weis says, “strives to meet the needs of each individual by offering specialized therapy techniques that may be combined with medications to ease withdrawal. These services address both physical and psychological effects of addiction and represent the ‘gold standard’ of treatment suggested in the Public Health Service’s Clinical Practice Guidelines.”

Cessation Services

The Medical College of Wisconsin program includes:

• Clinic services open to all ages
  
• Free initial consultation
  
• 6-8 individual cognitive behavioral therapy sessions to learn new ways of coping.
  
• Group and individual long-term relapse prevention
  
• Low fee/ability to pay based on financial needs
  
• Free start-up medications
  
• Free medication management for the first three months
  
• Session fees waived for research participants
  
• Optional self-hypnosis training
  

The clinic, located at the Curative Care Network at 1000 N. 92nd St., Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is staffed by Medical College behavioral health psychologists and psychiatrists. The clinic also supports the efforts of primary care physicians and other health care providers to help their patients quit smoking. Health care providers should consistently identify, document and treat every tobacco user they see. Even brief tobacco dependence intervention can be effective.

Five Keys for Quitting

According to the Clinical Practice Guidelines of the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research, the five keys for quitting are:

1. Get ready
   
   • Set a quit date and stick to it – don't indulge in even a single puff.
     
• Get rid of all cigarettes and ashtrays in your home, car or workplace.
  
• Think about past quit attempts. What worked and what didn’t?
  
2. Get support and encouragement.
   
   • Tell your family, friends and coworkers you are quitting.
     
   • Talk to your doctor or other health care provider.
     
   • Get group, individual or telephone counseling.
     
   • Stay in non-smoking areas.
     
3. Learn new skills and behaviors.
   
   • When you first try to quit, change your routine.
     
   • Reduce stress.
     
   • Distract yourself from urges to smoke.
     
   • Plan something enjoyable to do every day.
     
   • Drink a lot of water and other fluids.
     
   • Breathe in deeply when you feel the urge to smoke.
     
   • Reward yourself often.
     
4. Get medication and use it correctly.
   
• Talk with your health care provider about which medication will work best for you: Bupropion SR (available by prescription); nicotine gum (available over-the-counter); nicotine inhaler (available by prescription); nicotine nasal spray (available by prescription); or nicotine patch (available over-the-counter).
  
5. Be prepared for relapse or difficult situations.
   
   • Avoid alcohol.
     
• Be careful around other smokers.
  
• Improve your mood in ways other than smoking.
  
• Eat a healthy diet and stay physically active.
  
• Keep busy.