| Methods |
Setting: US primary care residency programme (physicians in training)
Recruitment: unselected patients in 5 primary care clinics |
| Participants |
1286 smoking patients not selected for motivation to quit
Providers: 196 primary care physicians in training |
| Interventions |
1. Advice only
2. Patient‐centred counselling, written materials, asked to schedule follow‐up visit, follow‐up letter (not used in this review)
3. Patient‐centred counselling and offer of prescription for nicotine gum
(Each group was further randomised to minimal (no calls) or intensive follow‐up by telephone (3 calls over 6m) from a health educator (HE) but no main effects or interactions were noted and no results were presented at 12 months so this factor is not analysed here) |
| Outcomes |
Sustained abstinence at 12m (reported in Ockene 1994) (6 & 12m). PP also reported
Validation: none |
| Notes |
Adjusted rates used in analysis. All physicians received training in minimal vs intensive interventions and delivered them according to random allocation of patient. 12m PP abstinence showed no effect of intervention.
69% of group 3 accepted prescription and received at least 1 box of gum.
Also contributes to Cochrane reviews of physician advice and NRT |
| Risk of bias |
| Bias |
Authors' judgement |
Support for judgement |
| Random sequence generation (selection bias) |
Unclear risk |
Randomized, no further information provided |
| Allocation concealment (selection bias) |
Unclear risk |
Each physician delivered 1 of the 3 interventions according to instructions in a packet for each patient. |
| Incomplete outcome data (attrition bias)
All outcomes |
Low risk |
17% of total sample unreachable and treated as smokers in analyses. 25 others not included |
