Respiratory[autotexts]

Smoking & vaping / Consultation template

Smoking, vaping and what was offered

A record of treatment offered rather than advice given, in the form an audit and the next clinician can both read.

Fills in order
  1. 1Smoking status
  2. 2Amount and duration
  3. 3per day for
  4. 4Pack-years
  5. 5Age started
  6. 6Quit date if ex-smoker
  7. 7Previous quit attempts, and what was use…
  8. 8Longest previous quit
  9. 9Other smokers in the household
  10. 10E-cigarettes or vaping
  11. 11Device and nicotine strength
  12. 12Used to quit smoking, alongside smoking,…
  13. 13Motivation to stop today
  14. 14Confidence in stopping, out of 10
  15. 15Very brief advice given
  16. 16Referral to stop smoking service

and 3 more, in the block below.

Paste block 19 fields 
Tobacco and nicotine:

Smoking status: [current, ex or never]
Type: [cigarettes, roll-ups, cigars, pipe, waterpipe, cannabis with tobacco]
Amount and duration: [] per day for [] years
Pack-years: []
Age started: []
Quit date if ex-smoker: []
Previous quit attempts, and what was used: []
Longest previous quit: []
Other smokers in the household: []

E-cigarettes or vaping: [never, current or ex]
Device and nicotine strength: []
Used to quit smoking, alongside smoking, or independently: []

Motivation to stop today: [ready now, thinking about it, not now]
Confidence in stopping, out of 10: []

Offered today:
Very brief advice given: [yes]
Referral to stop smoking service: [accepted, declined, or already under]
Pharmacotherapy discussed: [nicotine replacement therapy - patch plus a
short-acting form, varenicline, cytisinicline, bupropion, or a vaping product]
Prescribed or supplied: []
Follow-up arranged: []

Carbon monoxide reading: [] ppm

How to use it

Advice given is not an intervention; treatment offered is. Recording status alone is what most templates do, and it is why smoking appears in every letter and changes nothing. The three offer lines make it visible whether anything was actually put in the patient's hands, and they make the omission visible too. Combination nicotine replacement — a patch plus a short-acting form — is more effective than a patch alone and is still routinely under-prescribed. Record vaping separately from smoking rather than collapsing both into one line: they need different advice, and someone who has switched entirely to vaping has achieved something worth acknowledging in the letter. Never-smokers get the block too, because a never-smoker with airflow obstruction should send you looking for another explanation.

Why it says that

None of this is in the copied text. It is here so you can check the block against its source, and change it when the source changes.

Trials behind it

  • Baker 2021 2021 Neither adding a nicotine patch to varenicline nor doubling the treatment duration helped
  • Walker 2020 2020 Adding a nicotine e-cigarette to patches gave a modest improvement in quitting
  • TEC 2019 E-cigarettes nearly doubled one-year quit rates compared with nicotine replacement
  • Halpern 2018 2018 Only financial incentives worked; free cessation aids and free e-cigarettes alone did essentially nothing
  • Lung Health Study 2005 A cessation programme that worked for one in five participants still reduced all-cause mortality over 14.5 years

Records on respiratorytrials.org.

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