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HSE pays to help staff quit smoking

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An unknown amount of money from the West’s health budget has gone ‘up in smoke’ to train staff to stub-out their addictive smoking habits.

Hundreds of public health staff across the West, including Galway, were trained in how to stop smoking in 2013 – but the Health Service Executive (HSE) West says it doesn’t know how much the courses cost.

According to new figures obtained by the Galway City Tribune under the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act, a total of 367 HSE West staff received ‘smoking cessation’ training in 2013.

However, the cost of training staff to kick the smoking habit is unknown because the HSE West says it “does not hold records on the cost of providing internal training”.

It was confirmed that 194 staff from hospitals in the west as well as 173 primary care staff availed of the smoking cessation course, which are offered free of charge to all staff who smoke. The training course lasts six hours and is “national standardised”.

The cessation courses, which aim to help staff to stop smoking cigarettes, were held in-house at HSE West venues and were run by HSE trainers.

“The staff who attended the courses came from a variety of locations across the HSE West. Courses were run in a number of HSE venues from Donegal to Limerick, and a mix of staff from a range of disciplines in both primary care and acute hospital locations participated across the region.

“All brief intervention smoking cessation training was delivered by HSE trainers, comprising of health promotion and hospital cessation staff. This is a national standardised training course of six hours in duration,” the HSE West said.

The training courses were held at 16 centres across the HSE West administrative area. That included at the maternity lecture room at University Hospital Galway, and Brackernagh Health Centre in Ballinasloe.

There were further courses held at five Limerick locations, four Donegal locations and in Sligo, Ennis, Sacred Heart Training Centre in Roscommon, and the centre of nursing and midwifery education, Castlebar, Mayo.

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