JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

The growth of e-cigarette devices, after their initial promotion as safer alternatives to traditional cigarettes, brought about a disturbing trend of youth vaping. Vaping by youth increased recent years and peaking in 2019 with 27.5% of high school students vaping [1–3]. Daily vaping declined for youths the next year by 7 to 9%, but over 3.6 million youths still reported current vaping in a national survey(Miech et. Al, 2020). For adults, vaping devices were often used as treatment alternatives for smoking cessation instead of FDA-approved options[4]. Health professional training and skills development is needed to prevent and address patient vaping and e-cigarette use.

Objective:

Develop an understanding of training needs that would help a wide range of health professionals prevent and address vaping and e-cigarette use by their patients. The ultimate goal was to develop online training for health providers focused on vaping/e-cigarette cessation, in a continuing education/continuing medical education format.

Methods:

We conducted an extensive literature review focused on aspects of vaping/e-cigarette relevant to clinical care. Using the review and our experience as educators on substance abuse, we created an online survey about clinical skills needed in the area of vaping and e-cigarettes, which was completed by two groups of health professionals: 1)self-identified experts on vaping and 2)practicing health professionals who did not self-identify as having expertise. Additionally, we conducted a focus group of clinical staff at an in-patient psychiatric hospital. Finally, we solicited feedback from addiction cessation educators.

Results:

Health professional participants showed a strong interest in the training topics. The top 3 topics of interest were: • Recommended treatments for patients who vape or use e-cigarettes. • How to evaluate and treat health effects in patients who vape or use e-cigarettes. • How to provide brief interventions for patients who vape THC. Interestingly, area of expertise or medical specialty influenced opinion of topic importance. For example, self-identified experts more strongly supported the need for prevention strategies in comparison to other health care professionals. In contrast, health care professionals were far more interested in the “health effects of second-hand vaping” than were the experts. In addition, focus group of in-patient medical staff were more interested in the outcomes of EVALI and the pharmacology of THC than were the other groups.

Conclusions:

The needs analysis results support interest in clinical skills training related to vaping cessation by health professionals, and provide specific guidance on which topics are most needed. Health professional education on vaping is needed, wanted, and area of practice impacts topic interest significantly.