Medical student INtervention to promote effective nicotine dependence and tobacco HEalthcare (MIND-THE-GAP): single-centre feasibility randomised trial results.

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide), published as a randomized controlled trial.

The researchers aimed to determine if brief student-led counselling could enhance motivation to quit and smoking cessation behaviours among hospitalised patients.

Why It Was Studied

Medical students are a potentially untapped resource who could deliver cessation counselling, while upskilling themselves and changing their own attitudes to delivering such advice in the future; however, no studies have investigated this.

NCT02601599 (retrospectively registered 1 day after first participant recruited on November 3rd 2015).

Who Took Part

The age groups tagged for this paper are young adults, adults and middle-aged adults, both men and women.

A mixed-methods, 2-arm pilot feasibility randomised controlled trial with qualitative process evaluation enrolled 67 hospitalised adult smokers, who were recruited and randomized to receive a brief medical student-delivered cessation intervention (n = 33) or usual care (n = 34); 61 medical students received standardised cessation training and 33 were randomly assigned to provide a brief in-hospital consultation and follow-up support by phone or in-person one week post-discharge.

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized and pilot study.

Because people in this Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide) study were split into groups at random, differences between the groups are less likely to reflect who happened to join each one.

It is described as a pilot, a small early test of whether a larger Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide) study would be practical.

Data were analysed as intention to treat (ITT) using penalised imputation, per protocol, and random effects repeated measures.

Focus group interviews were conducted with students post-intervention to elicit their views on the training and intervention process.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Directive Counseling, Evaluation Studies as Topic, Feasibility Studies, Focus Groups, Inpatients, Patient Education as Topic and Pilot Projects.

Author keywords: Feasibility study, Medical students, Mixed methods, Randomised trial and Smoking.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized and pilot study of Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide).

Results are reported in around 6 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2017 (BMC medical education), a journal based in England.

More context: the Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide) compound page, all human trials.