The National Lung Cancer Screening Program (NLCSP) is coming soon. Health professionals, including GPs and primary health care nurses, will play a central and critical role in the NLCSP, which has been shown in international trials to achieve at least a 20% reduction in deaths from lung cancer compared to the use of chest radiography.
Tobacco smoking is the biggest risk factor for lung cancer, and health professionals have a key role in assisting patients with smoking cessation.
NLCSP eligibility criteria includes people aged between 50 and 70 years who are asymptomatic and currently smoke tobacco cigarettes, or have a history of cigarette smoking (and who have quit in the past 10 years), who have smoked at least 30 pack-years.
See the NLCSP website for:
• Program information about the NLCSP, including how to calculate pack-years
• Lung cancer screening resources for the health sector, with e-learning modules
• a healthcare provider digital toolkit
• for general practices, download the resource Get your practice ready for the NLCSP.
It is important to discuss smoking cessation with your patients and review and update smoking history in your clinical patient records. Evidence-based smoking cessation care is a combination of brief advice with multi-session behavioural intervention (such as Quitline), and pharmacotherapy as clinically appropriate.
To help you provide effective smoking cessation care, Quit Centre offers comprehensive clinical resources and training, including:
• Free accredited online training modules relating to smoking (and vaping) cessation
• Clinical tools and guidelines
• Podcasts and webinars for GPs, primary health care nurses and pharmacists.
• Easy referral for your patients to Quitline.
Supporting your patients to quit smoking is one of the most impactful health interventions. Explore all the resources available here on the Quit Centre website.