Community pharmacist Reena Barai (with the help of Darush Attar-Zadeh) explains the importance of making sure consultations are patient-centred.

As a community pharmacist, I appreciate the need to tailor my consultation style to the situation I am in and the patient to whom I am speaking. Over the years I have found that I have had to draw on skills such as motivational interviewing and coaching in order to support people to make lifestyle choices.

I often think about the training course I went on to learn how to be a stop smoking adviser. It went on for three days and we spent less than half a day talking about consultation skills. Yet to be a successful stop smoking adviser, you have to be able to engage the patient, listen to them, ask open questions, support them to make the choices that are right for them and adapt easily to changes in behaviour.

Empower the client

For this article, the latest in my series in Pharmacy Magazine on consultation skills, I have called in the expert: Darush Attar-Zadeh is a stop smoking specialist, a national trainer and a CPPE tutor. Darush is a firm believer that when someone wants to give up smoking, it is important to use techniques that empower the client and leave them in charge of their own timescale and progress. Below, Daresh gives some of his top tips for a patient-centred smoking cessation consultation and in the panel you will find some of his “do’s” and “don’ts”:

• Many smokers are fed up of being told to stop smoking, so it is important to be non-judgmental at all times
• Ask open questions, such as ‘Why do you want to stop smoking?’ rather than ‘Do you want to stop smoking?’
• Looking at previous quit attempts is an important part of assessing motivation and confidence. Ask the client: “When you previously quit, what do you think went well and what didn’t?” and “What do you think you will do differently this time around?”
• If someone has had multiple quit attempts, reassure them that the more times they try to stop smoking, the more likely they are to quit, as each attempt is a learning process
• It is occasionally appropriate to give suggestions. Advice can be framed along the lines of: “Would you like me to make some suggestions on what other people have done?” “One of my clients found……” “What some people do is……”

Encourage initiative

Most people will follow their own ideas and plans more readily than other people’s suggestions. While it can take more time and skill to encourage them to identify their own solutions, the results are worth it.