Objective: To evaluate th e impact of a training intervention To evaluate the impact of a training intervention for health care professionals on inpatients' smoking and alcohol consumption and to compare the hospital intervention for the two substances.
Methods: Through two parallel studies, we compared, using auto-administered questionnaires, the referred clinical behaviour on smoking of 66 health care professionals and the intervention received by 169 patients, with the clinical behaviour on hazardous drinking of other 38 professionals and other 118 patients from different hospital wards before and after attending a training in brief intervention on smoking cessation and hazardous alcohol drinking respectively.
Results: We only found slight differences between alcohol and tobacco concerning professionals' behaviour. Professionals declared to assist more often patients with alcohol risk consumption than smoking (36.4% vs 10.9% [p<.0001]) although with patients those differences haven't been confirmed. They just told to have been asked more often about alcohol consumption than about smoking (43.6% vs 30.8% [p<.05]). There were no differences after the training sessions.
Discussion: Before and after training, health professionals hardly intervene in patients with alcohol or tobacco consumption even we observed higher detection and assist for alcohol risk consumption. It is necessary to examine other barriers to the application of the knowledge gained.