Use of tailored videos in primary care smoking cessation interventions

The past decade has witnessed a growing interest in developing and implementing effective, primary-care-based smoking cessation programs, especially since such programs have been shown to be among the most cost-effective medical services known. However, barriers such as limited clinician time and lack of confidence in delivering cessation counseling interfere with the consistent delivery of smoking cessation counseling during primary care visits. Many of these barriers are overcome by employing educational videos which can deliver both motivational messages and information about quitting strategies. In this paper, we summarize our collective experience in developing and using videos to facilitate smoking cessation counseling in a variety of medical settings. We also provide a discussion of implementation issues, a description of the video development process and information on patient exposure to the videos.