Awareness and Acceptance of Nicotine-free Smoking Intervention Methods (Acetium® Lozenge) Increased Among Health Care Professionals by Targeted E-training as Confirmed by Post-training Surveys

Background/aim: To increase the awareness and acceptance of the new nicotine-free smoking intervention method (Acetium (R) lozenge; Biohit Oyj, Finland), targeted E-Training with accompanying surveys were conducted in 2018, 2020 and 2023. Patients and methods: The target groups were derived from the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)-compliant registers of Finnish physicians, pharmacy staff and nurses owned by Success Clinic Oy. The post-training surveys recorded 1) awareness of the responders on Acetium (R) lozenge, 2) their attitude to nicotine-free smoking intervention methods in general as well as 3) their readiness for recommending this new tool to their patients. Results: The three surveys accumulated a total of 1.892 responders. There was a constantly increasing awareness on Acetium (R) lozenge, increased interest in nicotine-free smoking intervention methods in general and a substantially increased readiness to recommend Acetium (R) acceptance to the smoking patients. The impact of E-Training, as measured by the increased interest in nicotine-free methods (56%) and readiness to endorse Acetium (R) acceptance (58%), was most marked among nurses who had the least awareness on Acetium (R) lozenge beforehand, exceeding the respective increase among medical doctors by 20% and 10% and among pharmacy staff by 30% and 20%, respectively. Conclusion: This E-Training had a favorable effect 1) on the responders' interest in nicotine-free smoking intervention method in general, 2) on increasing the awareness of Acetium (R) lozenge as a novel innovative method to quit smoking, as well as 3) on increasing the responders' readiness to introduce the new device to their smoking patients who are motivated to stop smoking nicotine-free.