Tobacco intervention training in American College of Nurse-Midwives accredited education programs.

The objective of this study was to assess the content, amount of time, and educational techniques used in tobacco intervention training in American College of Nurse-Midwives (ACNM) accredited programs. All 43 ACNM-accredited programs were surveyed; 34 (79%) responded. Almost one in three programs (29%) offered fewer than 3 hours of instruction in tobacco education. The programs were more likely to offer training in the clinical science areas and least likely to offer training in the sociopolitical areas. Few programs (38%) required students to be taught smoking cessation techniques with patients in a clinical setting. The main barriers to teaching more (>3 h) tobacco education were not enough time in the curriculum (28%) and not having staff who are adequately trained (15%). Midwife education programs need to increase their instructional efforts, especially in the clinical science and sociopolitical areas, if midwives are to meet their goals of keeping women healthy, and in the case of pregnancies, making it a healthy experience for the woman and her newborn. This may require the development of a model core tobacco curriculum for all ACNM-accredited programs.

Tobacco intervention training in graduate psychiatric nursing education programs.

BACKGROUND: Tobacco use is the leading cause of preventable death, with the highest rate of cigarette smoking seen in mentally ill people. OBJECTIVE: This study assessed the content, amount of time, and educational techniques used in tobacco education training for graduate psychiatric nurses. STUDY DESIGN: A national mail survey of all graduate psychiatric nursing education programs. RESULTS: One-third of programs offered detailed (>1 hr) information on stages of change, the 5 A's and 5 R's. The majority of basic science tobacco topics were not covered or were covered briefly, and the 6 sociopolitical topics were not covered by the majority of programs. Training was by the traditional didactic method using scientific literature reviews. CONCLUSIONS: This study provides evidence of the need to improve the education of psychiatric nurses as tobacco interventionists at both the individual level and the legislative and policy formulation level. J Am Psychiatr Nurses Assoc, 2008; 14(2), 117-124. DOI: 10.1177/1078390307311973.