Tobacco use is a significant public health hazard, responsible for nearly 700.000 annual deaths in Europe. Despite these figures, still 28% of European adults are smokers with the consequently risk of maintaining and even increasing the burden of tobacco-related diseases in the old continent. Treating tobacco dependence is both effective and cost-effective and is supported by a solid body of evidence. Healthcare professionals play a vital role in helping smokers quit, with smoking cessation intervention knowledge and skills being a multi-disciplinary preventable content that should be learned by all healthcare professionals during their educational years. Tobacco cessation interventions range from brief advice to intensive counseling and include the use of pharmacological treatments. Then, students from healthcare professions are expected to acquire the knowledge and skills needed to contribute to treating tobacco dependence and reducing the burden of tobacco-related diseases. Gap: Nevertheless, tobacco cessation services are still insufficient. One of the reasons is the lack of training in how to support smokers quit received by healthcare professionals during their academic years. Thus, until now, smoking cessation intervention knowledge, skills, and competences have been offered to healthcare professionals as part of their continuous professional development. The Word Health Organization has recommended the inclusion of tobacco control in all curricula for healthcare professionals to ensure that all new staff is appropriately trained. Solution: The INSTrUCT, a theoretically-guided educational programme, has been designed to teach the necessary knowledge, skills, and competencies that all health professionals should learn before working in a clinical setting. The programme will incorporate innovative pedagogies and methods that will support not only learners but also educators. The programme is an open educational resource (OER) composed of an online course with videos, a virtual simulation area and an implementation guideline for teachers. The OER will be easily introduced into the Higher Education curricula of several health science degrees (medicine, nursing, pharmacy, etc.). Participants: As nurses are the largest group in the healthcare workforce, we will first develop and test INSTrUCT to nursing students from four European countries. Focusing on nursing at this stage, we will cover the most numerous groups of actors in the clinical setting, whose main responsibilities are oriented to health promotion and health education. So, our participants are six nursing schools from four European countries (Belgium, the UK, Spain and Portugal) that will use the OER with their nursing students. It is expected that 180-240 students will use the OER. Methodology: INSTrUCT is a 36 months innovative implementation and dissemination educational Project intended to create an OER by a participatory theory-driven approach. • First, we will adapt and update a former e-learning course addressed to healthcare professionals in Spain and Portugal to the characteristics of undergraduate students by doing a literature review and focus groups with teachers and students. Once decided the contents, the scripts and exercises will be drafted. Knowledge, skills and competences will be acquired through several pedagogical resources: e-learning course with slides, videos, exercises, and for the first time a virtual simulation that will provide the opportunity to test students’ content and clinical reasoning skills in a real-life simulated tobacco cessation intervention. • Second, we will support teachers and organisations to implement the OER through a training activity and an implementation guideline. • Third, we will evaluate the OER with a mix-methods approach. Process indicators: coverage, fidelity and dose of the programme. Impact indicators: changes of knowledge, attitudes and behaviour of students. Qualitative indicators: satisfaction, perceptions towards its applicability, etc. • Fourth, we will disseminate the OER by two multiplier events, a policy recommendations document and educational publications derived of our results that will help to scale up and accelerate the use of INSTrUCT in Europe and overseas. In conclusion, our goal is that INSTrUCT becomes a useful resource available to all healthcare Higher Education Schools across Europe, and that it tackles the historical neglect of smoking cessation education by introducing it as “multi-disciplinary educational content required for healthcare professions before graduation”.
The INSTRUCT project’s primary aim is to improve the smoking cessation education of healthcare professionals in higher education by increasing the integration of new resources such as online texts, videos, and virtual simulations. We envisioned implementing the project mainly for nurses, but other healthcare professional students have also benefited from the development and implementation of this open educacional resource (OER). The project objectives included: • To develop an innovative, interactive OER to improve the acquisition of smoking cessation knowledge and practical skills of nursing students. • To implement and evaluate the OER in all partner organizations. • To disseminate the OER among nursing schools in partner countries (Belgium, the UK, Portugal, and Spain at this stage) and give support to other countries willing to use our programme in the EU or overseas. Specific objectives of the project included: • To create a strategic approach for training smoking cessation knowledge, skills, and competencies in Nursing Science transferable at the European level to other degree careers - Product: implementation and dissemination guidelines. • To promote the acquisition and validation of new knowledge, skills, and competencies: Product: open educational resource (OER) as a whole. • To disseminate the intellectual outputs of the OER “INSTrUCT” and its outcomes/results through publication and two multiplier events. Ultimately, INSTrUCT may contribute to decreasing the tobacco epidemic and the burden of tobacco-related diseases in our continent.
PROBLEM: Tobacco smoking continues to be the leading preventable cause of death in Europe making it responsible for more than 700,000 deaths annually. Smokers are frequent users of healthcare services, and their interactions with healthcare professionals might be an ideal teachable moment to encourage quitting. Health care professionals play a vital role in helping smokers to quit, therefore smoking cessation knowledge and skills should be learned by all health care professionals during their educational years. NEED TO BE ADDRESSED: Despite the importance of tobacco cessation education and training in the field of healthcare degrees, the inclusion of tobacco dependence content and training on counseling skills is minimally provided in higher education in Europe. SOLUTION: The INSTrUCT has provided a response to the identified gap in the “low rate of education and training in smoking cessation” in higher education in Europe by developing and testing an “Innovative e-learning educational resource in smoking cessation”. This programme has been designed to generate capacity into the Higher Education in order that future clinical health workers acquire the necessary competencies to assist smokers, and it incorporates innovative pedagogies and methods that support educators and learners. The programme has created an open digital learning resource (theoretical modules, with videos, and virtual simulation) easily introduced in higher education curricula of several health science degrees (medicine, nursing, pharmacy, etc).