"This service helped me quit smoking"

Background

Andrew had smoked for almost 18 years, smoking about twenty cigarettes a day. He used to play many sports but had mostly given up. He didn’t have the energy and felt tired a lot of the time. He was completely fed up with smoking and the way it had taken over his life, and he felt appalled at how much of his money was being spent on it. Andrew decided to quit using Teladoc Health’s Smoking Cessation Service, which he was eligible to use via his work employee support programme.

The first consultation was with a Smoking Cessation Nurse, and together, they went through his smoking history and triggers for smoking and were available to support him in stopping smoking. On that first consultation, they agreed on a Quit Date, and Andrew decided he would go out and buy the nicotine replacement patches and nicotine mints to help reduce the cravings in the first few weeks of quitting.

Andrew found that the regular phone calls from the nurse kept him focused during the difficult first few weeks. It was a chance to discuss triggering situations and ways to manage them. As the weeks passed, he was able to reduce the strength of the nicotine patches, and then a few weeks later, he found he didn’t need to use them anymore. Andrew met his Quit Date and became a non-smoker.

The Smoking Cessation nurse kept in regular contact, and then, after four months of being a non-smoker, he felt he was okay to go it alone.

Patient statement:

“This service helped me quit my twenty cigarettes-a-day habit, giving me the support I needed to quit having decided to do so, plus with keeping me going and making me feel like I could come out of this as a non-smoker, not a smoker taking a break – that’s a big physiological difference to where I have been previously and made all the difference. Kate was amazing; I looked forward to her calls. She was very supportive, and I felt like she took the time to get to know me, which meant she could better support me. I would highly recommend this service!”