Empowering healthcare providers through smoking cessation training in Malaysia: a preintervention and postintervention evaluation on the improvement of knowledge, attitude and self-efficacy

Objectives Healthcare providers are ideally positioned to advise their patients to quit smoking by providing effective smoking cessation intervention. Thus, we evaluate the effectiveness of a 1-day training programme in changing the knowledge, attitude and self-efficacy of healthcare providers in smoking cessation intervention. Methods A prepost study design was conducted in 2017. The 8-hour Smoking Cessation Organising, Planning and Execution (SCOPE) training comprised lectures, practical sessions and role-play sessions to 218 healthcare providers. A validated evaluation tool, Providers' Smoking Cessation Training Evaluation, was administered to assess the impact of training on knowledge, attitude and self-efficacy on smoking cessation intervention. Results After SCOPE training, the knowledge score increased significantly from 7.962.34 to 10.35 +/- 1.57 (p<0.001). Attitude and self-efficacy in smoking cessation intervention also increased significantly from 34.32 +/- 4.12 to 37.04 +/- 3.92 (p<0.001) and 40.31 +/- 8.61 to 54.67 +/- 7.45 (p<0.001) respectively. Pretraining and post-training scores improved significantly for all professions, and each measure, particularly self-efficacy. Conclusion This study demonstrates that SCOPE training could improve healthcare providers' knowledge, attitude and self-efficacy on smoking cessation intervention. Future training is recommended to equip healthcare providers with current knowledge, positive attitude and high self-efficacy to integrate what they have learned into practice successfully.