Staff Education Project Staff Education to Improve Tobacco-Use Screening and Referral for Patients Without a Primary Care Provide

This project is a quality improvement initiative conducted in a rural clinic in South Carolina, focused on staff education and implementation of practices to improve tobacco use screening and referral for patients without a primary care provider. The practice problem is inconsistent screening for tobacco use and identification of patients without a primary care provider, resulting in missed opportunities for prevention and continuity of care. Addressing this issue is vital, as nurses play a key role in health promotion and connecting patients to smoking cessation resources. The practice-focused question of the DNP project asks whether empowering clinic nurses and advanced practice registered nurses through targeted staff education improves identification of tobacco using patients without a primary care provider. The purpose of this doctoral project is to implement and evaluate a staff education intervention that strengthens nursing practice. Descriptive and comparative analytical strategies were used, including analysis of pre- and post-education survey data, to evaluate changes in nursing knowledge. Nine of ten invited (90%) completed pre- and post-assessments. Post-test scores improved for seven participants (78%) and remained unchanged for two participants (22%), indicating improvement in tobacco-use screening and referral knowledge. The major outcome of this project is a QR-code–based staff education module focused on improving staff ability to identify tobacco-using patients without a primary care provider and make appropriate referrals. The implications for nursing practice include strengthening nurses’ roles in preventive care and improving access to smoking cessation resources.