Excess winter mortality: influenza or cold stress? Observational study

Abstract

consistently because of pressure on time and competing priorities.Overall, the results are challenging and of direct practical relevance.Advice by doctors and nurses reaches primarily light "non-dependent" smokers. 13 Patients who suffer serious health consequences of their smoking, are keen to stop, and yet carry on smoking are typically highly dependent, and single session interventions do not seem to have sufficient power to help them.In these groups, interventions comprising several sessions with specialists have been shown to be effective. 14 The new specialist smoking cessation services, which are funded by the government and are now established in all health authorities to provide intensive behavioural and pharmacological treatments should collaborate with staff on wards and include hospital patients as one of their priority target groups.We thank the cardiac rehabilitation nurses who took part in this study and their managers for the high quality of their input.The following hospitals took part: Barnet General, Basildon, Crawley, Derriford in Plymouth, Epsom General, Greenwich District, Homerton, Joyce Green in Dartford, King's College, The London Chest, Newham General, Royal Brompton and Harefield, The