NSR III - BIPS

Area. Community Care Areas are the geographic catchment areas within the
Health Services Executive. This smoking cessation staffs are all based in
regional Health Promotion Departments of the Health Services Executive and
their brief covers:
� policy development
� delivery of smoking cessation programmes
� training of health care professionals
The recruitment of Smoking Cessation Officers has occurred in an adhoc
manner across the country with numbers of officers varying across regions.
There has also been a public service embargo on staff recruitment which has
hindered staffing levels. It is sometimes the case that Smoking Cessation
Officers hold other functions within Health Promotion Units so that not all of
their time is dedicated solely to smoking cessation related activities.
Therefore it is difficult to know at any one time how many smoking cessation
staff are active. As the post holders sometimes have a range of objectives it
is difficult to capture, monitor and evaluate their work load, outputs and most
importantly the effectiveness of their outcomes. This management
information weakness has an obvious impact on strategic resource planning
for smoking cessation at national level.
National Smoking Cessation Guidelines for these smoking cessation staff have
been drawn up but await implementation. The publication of these guidelines
would create cohesion and focus for smoking cessation officers and aid
uniformity of service delivery. There would be an obvious knock on effect for
the reliability and utility of the data and information captured from their work
if it was all captured in the same way.
Data Deficits
It had been envisaged that detail regarding the activities and outcomes of all
the Smoking Cessation officers working with pregnant and mothers who have
given birth in maternity units in Ireland would be available for this report.
Unfortunately due to resources constraints within the HSE this useful
information is unavailable at time of writing. It is known however, that there
are about twenty Smoking cessation staffs working within maternity settings
in Ireland. A seminar is planned for later this year which these officers will
attend and data regarding their outputs and outcomes is currently being
compiled, as mentioned. This seminar is being organised by a senior smoking
cessation officer based in Dublin who also carries a brief as the part time coordinator
of the Irish Smoke Free Hospitals Initiative (a member of the
European Network of Smoke Free Hospitals Initiative) At this point in time it
appears that there is a growing political will to engage other actors as a
means of ensuring that a more specific targeting of research and education
should be happening regarding the growing concern of smoking and
pregnancy prevalence.
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