Background: General practitioners can reach large number of smokers. Their good interpersonal relationship with patients promises successful guidance with regard to smoking. However, little is known about the accessibility of smokers to intervention in general practice and about the motivation to abandon smoking. There is a lack of information concerning the GPs' perceived responsibility for smoking counselling. The goal of the study is to examine to what extent smokers can be advised in general practice and how GPs' assess the practicability of such counselling.
Methods: The sample consisted of consecutive general practices patients. A random sample of 39 GPs was drawn and 34 took part in the study. Of 3434 patients, 99.7 % participated in the screening procedure. Inclusion criteria (age 18 to 70 years, admitted smokers), were met by 551 subjects. The participation rate was 81.4 % (n = 449). All GPs received a single training session. Counselling was tailored to the motivation to quit. More than 60 % of the patients were not motivated to stop smoking.
Results: Following the study design, 87.8 % of all smoking patients were counselled by GPs. A total of 79.3 % among the GPs considered the intervention to be practicable.
Conclusions: Despite a low motivation to quit smoking in the general practice, 80 % of the smoking patients can be reached by interventions. Furthermore, since the agreement of the GPs concerning practicability was almost 80 %, measures should be initiated to promote counselling for all smokers within the scope of medical consultation.