Nurses and smoking: barriers and support for quitting

This article describes a short project aiming to understand the prevalence of smoking among nurses, explore the barriers to smoking cessation for nurses who smoke and provide smoking cessation support. The ultimate goal was to enable nurses to help their patients more effectively and reduce the risk of chronic respiratory disease. The project began with quantitative work, which was used to inform a more qualitative understanding of the barriers that nurses face when thinking about quitting smoking, and the support they need to help them to stop smoking.