Attitudes of community optometrists to smoking cessation: an untapped opportunity overlooked?

Aim: To assess community optometrists' attitudes and current behaviour regarding provision of smoking cessation advice in their practice.
Methods: A self-completion postal questionnaire was sent to community optometrists in north-west England identified from the General Optical Council's practice lists.
Results: Of 709 optometrists identified, 71.8% (509/709) returned the completed questionnaire. Few community optometrists routinely asked about smoking habits: only 6.2% (95% CI: 4.1-8.3) (n = 31) at new patient consultations, and 2.2% (95% CI: 0.9-3.5) (n=11) at follow-up visits. Reasons for optometrists not routinely providing smoking cessation advice included: not their role (35.4%, n=180), lack of time (22.0%, n=112) and forgetting to ask (21.4%, n=109). Overall 67.6% (95% CI: 63.5-71.7) (n=344) of community optometrists wanted to improve their knowledge of smoking and visual impairment with 56.2% (95% CI: 51.9-60.5) (n=286) requesting further training.
Conclusion: Despite low levels of current involvement, many optometrists were keen to receive training on smoking cessation topics. We suggest that there are untapped opportunities to develop brief interventions to promote smoking cessation services in community optometry settings.