Development of an online smoking cessation program for use in hospital and following discharge: smoke-free recovery

Background: Tobacco smoking can have negative health outcomes on recovery from surgery. Although it is recommended best practice to provide patients with advice to quit and follow-up support, provision of post-discharge support is rare. Developing an online smoking cessation program may help address this gap. Objectives: This paper describes the development and pretesting of an online smoking cessation program (smoke-free recovery, SFR) tailored to the orthopaedic trauma population for use while in hospital and post-discharge. Methods: Drawing on the DoTTI framework for developing an online program, the following steps were followed for program development: (1) design and development; (2) testing early iteration; (3) testing for effectiveness and (4) integration and implementation. This article describes the first two stages of SFR program development. Results: SFR is a 10-module online smoking cessation program tailored for patients with orthopaedic trauma. Of the participants who completed testing early iterations, none reported any difficulties orientating themselves to the program or understanding program content. The main themes were that it was ‘helpful’, provision of ‘help to quit’ was low and SFR increased thoughts of ‘staying quit post-discharge’. Conclusions: This study found that a theory and evidence-based approach as the basis for an online smoking cessation program for patients with orthopaedic trauma was acceptable to users. A randomised controlled trial will be conducted to examine whether the online smoking cessation program is effective in increasing smoking cessation and how it can be integrated and implemented into hospital practice (stages three and four of the DoTTI framework).