Evaluation of an Online Tobacco Cessation Course for Health Professions Students

Objective. To implement and evaluate the impact of a semester-long, online, 1-credit elective course designed to promote tobacco cessation counseling proficiency among health professions students. Design. Online technology was used to create an elective course devoted to tobacco cessation, modeled closely after the Rx for Change curriculum. Students from pharmacy, nursing, and other health disciplines enrolled in the course. Assessment. Students completed pretraining and posttraining survey instruments that assessed their self-reported skills and ability to counsel patients for tobacco cessation. Overall ability to counsel for tobacco cessation and each of the "5 A's'' approach for comprehensive counseling (ask, advise, assess, assist, arrange) increased significantly from pretraining to posttraining (p < 0.001). Self-efficacy also increased from 2.2 to 4.1 (p < 0.001; on a 5-point scale). Conclusion. This study demonstrated that an online tobacco cessation course improved student-reported ability and skills to counsel patients on tobacco cessation.