Many who are reading here are going to relate to Mark's experience with dealing with cessation professionals as well as with their other health care providers. We have a page up at www.WhyQuit.com that you may want to refer to your medical professionals who you personally encounter--people like your physicians, dentists, pharmacists, etc.

(See WhyQuit's patient resources)

Most people in health care get little to no training in the field of smoking cessation, and what they do get is usually materials either designed or heavily influenced by pharmaceutical companies who have a vested interest in selling products.

 

Your health care professionals often want to help and offer assistance and are just as frustrated with the prospect of their patients quitting as the patients are themselves. They try to encourage their patients to use the state of the art approaches and constantly see them fail.

 

Let them know there is another way out there and if they go through the effort of actually talking to their patients who have successfully quit smoking and stayed free, they will quickly realize what they can really do to help their patients. (see So how did most successful ex-smokers actually quit?)

 

When dealing with general health care providers you may have a real impact on how they deal with all of their patients. Trying to share these insights with people who are "trained smoking experts" is not likely to have much of a positive outcome. They are already indoctrinated into believing that they know what people do to have to quit. (see Who Should You Believe?)

 

People in the general health care community often realize that something is missing and that the techniques that they have been encouraged to use are usually ineffective. The more successful quitters share their insights with their health care providers, the more obvious it will become to their health care providers that the way to quit smoking and to stay free is simply making and sticking to a personal commitment to never take another puff.

 

Joel

Related readings:

WhyQuit's patient resources
Problems and limitations with the use of NRT's