Tobacco Awareness Project

So, this week was insanely hectic with everything else not related to school and I will attempt to do a brief run of what's happening at UCSF right now. This weekend, UCSF Alumni Bob Day hosted his annual barbecue at his house in Corte Madera that he has been hosting for ASP over the past 32 years. About 20 of us pharmacy students drove across the Golden Gate Bridge to be pleasantly surprised with the welcoming weather in Marin county. We were given a tour of his gorgeous home and took a hike along the lush mountains in the nearby Redwood forest, making the average backyard in the city look like a patch of dry grass. Smelling the grill on our way back, we were treated to an old-fashioned American barbecue dinner: hamburgers, hot links, mashed potatoes, chicken salad, fruit salad, homemade cookies, and fruit tarts. It was the perfect salvation from a nonstop trail of midterms.



I met with Dr. Robin Corelli and Dr. Kroon to plan out our roles as Tobacco Awareness Project Coordinators. The project has shifted from its original emphasis on prevention toward quitting. The first order of business was to attend these counseling sessions where we shadow pharmacists assessing and assisting patients to quit smoking. Then we conduct demonstrations or lectures about medication use. This counseling experience will come in handy in our third years when we start screening every patient in the hospital for tobacco use. We will also have an opportunity to help write the tobacco cessation chapter in the therapeutics book. Having our names in a publication in our second year will be quite an achievement. Also, there are a ton of health fairs where industry representatives will be providing lung function machines, computer-based imaging of smokers with continual smoking over a period of time, cessation consultations, and medication use demonstrations. These fairs include the mobile unit known as the GSK Motivational Center, sponsored by GlaxoSmithKline, to promote their OTC nicotine replacement products; the other includes the Nascar Solano County Fair.



Currently, there are two main types of drugs: nicotine replacement therapies and nicotinic partial agonists. A motley of formulations are associated with low patient adherence because are using their meds incorrectly. For example, the Nicotrol nicotinic inhaler is not like an albuterol inhaler. Patients have to create the inflow with their lungs by sucking on the inhaler in a stuccato manner over 20 minutes. Another example is the nicorrette gum. Unlike regular trident, you only chew the gum until a tingling sensation is felt, then park the piece along the cheek until the sensation dissapears and continue to repeat the process. The frequency of chewing the gum must be decreased over a ten-twelve week period to allow the body to slowly decrease its reliance on nicotine.



I visited my resdent Robert also. I realized that Robert is extremely happy during my visit. When I asked him why, he said that it was because the doctor decided to release him in about a month. He plans to get another apartment in the city and resume his life. I worry about what is going to happen to him when he is outside of an environment that protect him from drugs and other bad influences. He does seem older and wiser than his former self when he was living on the streets. Even though he is off heroine, he still cannot kick his smoking habit. He can at least spend his last years perhaps with his grown daughters or in peace in the city he loves so much.