International Meeting “Challenges in the Implementation of Training to Quit Smoking”

On the 11th and 12th of March the INSTrUCT Project consortium held a meeting within the framework of the “International Meeting on Challenges in the Implementation of Training to Quit Smoking” in Coimbra. The event had a hybrid format, face-to-face and online, with a total of 106 participants. INSTrUCT is an educational projectfunded by ERASMUS+ led by the Tobacco Control Unit in collaboration with e-oncology of the Catalan Institute of Oncology (ICO).

INSTrUCT is an online educational resource aimed at promoting the smoking cessation knowledge and skills among the higher education students in all Health Sciences Degrees. During the meeting, this educational resource was presented to professors from various universities, explaining INSTrUCT implementation and evaluation process at that moment, in which students, professors and researchers participated. Up to now, more than 1,000 students from various European universities have completed the course during its pilot phase. The universities involved are Coimbra School of Nursing (ESEnfC), the University of Barcelona (Spain), the University of Navarra (Spain), the University of Lleida (Spain), King’s College London (United Kingdom), the Universite Libre de Bruxelles and the Erasmushogeschool Brussel (Belgium) and, the Catalan Institute of Oncology (Spain), coordinator of this consortium. This online educational resource is available in four languages ​​(English, French, Spanish and Portuguese).

During this International meeting, several experts in smoking cessation and educational field participated, including an ESEnfC student who pursued the course in 2021. The student, Francisco Frias, shared his experience of the INSTrUCT course. He highlighted that the virtual cases were very useful to apply the knowledge acquired in the real practice.

This international educational project envisions to be a useful resource to train Health Sciences students in smoking cessation so that they can be decisive in their professional future in reducing the significant burden of morbidity and mortality associated with smoking in Europe. Noteworthy that smoking causes 8,000,000 deaths in the world, which represents approximately 15% of mortality in our context.