[Assessment of the effectiveness of pharmacists' activities in treatment of tobacco-addicted patients in the context of pharmacists' counselling in Cracow's pharmacies].

Tobacco-related diseases killed 100 millions people in 20th century and unless urgent action is taken, it is predicted that 1 billion people in total will be killed by smoking in this century. Pharmacists as health-care professionals should support the healthy lifestyle campaign and motivate smokers to quit smoking especially as they have the theoretical basis for such counselling. The aims of the study were: 1. to evaluate the readiness of pharmacists employed in public pharmacies to manage patients who would like to stop smoking; 2. to assess the pharmacists' current knowledge of the harmfulness of smoking and methods of treatment of this addiction. The pharmacists were interviewed for readiness to help addicted people and for knowledge of health promotion problems. A study was carried out do determine pharmacists counselling skills. Investigator (monitor) visited pharmacies passing him(her)self off as a smoker who would like to quit smoking and enquired about methods of the addiction cessation. Next the investigator filled in questionnaires according to the pharmacists' answers. Sixty pharmacists were interviewed. The results showed that pharmacists were willing to help tobacco-addicted patients and although they strongly recommended smoking cessation, their knowledge of methods of tobacco-addiction treatment was restricted. The strongest interest and most extensive knowledge of smoking cessation problems was observed in pharmacists ranging in age from 30 to 50 whereas pharmacists over 50 showed the worst results. The reason of this result was due to imperfect factual knowledge and unawareness of the value of pharmaceutical care in the oldest group of pharmacists. Insufficient education of pharmacists may influence the effectiveness of counseling.