# Empowering healthcare professionals to help smokers quit: Relevance of a smoking cessation online training program

## TL;DR

An online course on smoking cessation was highly satisfying and effective for healthcare professionals, with varying success rates across different professions.

## Contribution

The study evaluates the effectiveness and satisfaction of a smoking cessation MOOC for healthcare professionals.

## Key findings

- The MOOC had a high satisfaction rate of 97.9% among participants.
- Rehabilitation professionals had the highest quiz success rate at 40.2%.
- Nurse assistants had the lowest quiz success rate at 9.4%.

## Abstract

Healthcare professionals are instrumental in aiding smokers to quit, necessitating evidence-based smoking cessation education. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) provide a flexible platform for such education. This study assessed the satisfaction of health professionals with the content of the MOOC “Smoking: Quit Your Own Way!”, distributed over the period 2020–2023, and their success rates in completing of this course.

We conducted a descriptive study.

The study based on quantitative data from 4229 learners on France Université Numérique (FUN) and 1488 on Pédagogie Numérique en Santé (PNS) platforms who completed the satisfaction questionnaire on the content of the MOOC and who answered the quizzes offered during the course.

Most participants were women (FUN: 79.7 %; PNS: 84.0 %), with nurses being the largest group (FUN: 27.7 %; PNS: 28.6 %). Satisfaction was high (97.9 %). Weekly quiz success rates ranged from 15.5 % to 30.0 %. Rehabilitation professionals had the highest success rate at 40.2 %, followed by medical doctors at 35.7 %, and dental surgeons at 34.9 %. Midwives and nurses both had a success rate of 32.2 %. Other notable rates included prevention professionals at 30.9 % and psychologists at 27.6 %. The lowest success rates were seen in social professions (16.0 %) and nurse assistants (9.4 %).

The “Smoking: Quit Your Own Way!” MOOC effectively train healthcare professionals in smoking cessation, enhancing their theoretical and practical skills to support smokers.