The Smokefree team are committed to empowering patients and ensuring that patient centered care is at the heart of our practice both in hospital and in the community. A bespoke stop smoking service is available for community patients with serious mental illness.
The service helps to address the health inequalities and subsequent reduction in life expectancy of those who smoke.
We also support staff, sign posting them to the NHS staff stop smoking offer, which includes 24/7 access, support and funded NRT or vapes.
Further information
A pilot project running in Notts and Nottingham seeks to help long term smokers with a mental health condition to give up smoking, by using a harm reduction approach with a gradual path to give up smoking. In this conversation with a healthcare worker, a patient describes their stop smoking journey. A lot of people believe that smoking can help with issues like anxiety but in fact, smoking (and other nicotine products) don’t really help. People who give up smoking usually report improved mood and mental health, once the withdrawal stage is over.
In this conversation with a healthcare professional, a mental health inpatient describes how the smokefree policies in a Nottingham mental health hospital have helped her address her smoking.