Smoking Cessation

Boston Medical Center (BMC) can help those who want to quit smoking for good. BMC’s Division of Psychiatry offers a medically supervised Smoking Cessation Program for patients and staff. The program follows an eight-week, one-hour-per-week classroom model with a curriculum that includes pharmacotherapy, nicotine replacement (gum and patches), stress reduction training, cognitive therapy, social support, and relapse prevention counseling.

In this video, BMC experts discuss the individual and group counseling options available to address the physical, psychological, and medical needs of individuals trying to kick this life-threatening habit.

The program meets weekly on Wednesdays in the late afternoon. A mixture of psychology fellows, medical residents, and master-level nurses often join in delivering the program. The class, as a whole, has a unified quit date of the evening before the fifth class. The first four sessions are spent teaching specific skills and behaviors and discussing specific medications that will lower urges after quitting. The last three classes focus on relapse prevention, and each patient receives tailored advice on how to stay quit based on their specific individual needs and issues. Peer support and group norms also become a major source of help for each participant.

This clinical resource for BMC patients also serves as a center for training and research in tobacco control available to the entire medical center community. It has been a valuable source for tobacco-related research and has been utilized to train tobacco cessation specialists.

Referrals to the BMC Smoking Cessation program can be made by calling Primary Care at 617.414.5951 or by placing an Epic referral to Behavioral Medicine—Smoking Cessation.