Oxfordshire LPC has encouraged pharmacies nationwide to get involved in the Department of Health's (DH) ‘Stoptober' smoking campaign later this year, highlighting the success of a recent scheme carried out across its pharmacies.

The joint scheme between Oxfordshire PCT, Oxfordshire LPC and Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust ran from December 2011 to January 2012 and resulted in 360 people being referred to stop smoking services or in-house advisors at GP surgeries.

Stoptober is a campaign organised by NHS Smokefree, which is designed to encourage people to stop smoking for 28 days during October

More on smoking cessation Category Focus: Smoking cessation Pharmacies support record numbers of stop smoking       attempts in Scotland Community pharmacy must be used to improve ‘the       health of the nation'

Organisers gave pharmacy staff a ‘health/wealth wheel' to explain the physical and financial benefits of stopping smoking and a short questionnaire to establish whether patients had considered quitting in the past and whether they were interested in getting help. Oxfordshire LPC chief officer Fiona Castle told C+D that the campaign materials helped pharmacy staff feel more comfortable when approaching patients in store.

"Staff found it so much easier with something in their hand that they could link around the conversation," she said. "Gimmicks definitely work."

Ms Castle advised pharmacists to attempt their own scheme during Stoptober, as she felt the campaign in Oxfordshire had been successful because it ran alongside the launch of the NHS quit kits. The fact that it was linked to a national campaign had meant that "pharmacists and staff didn't feel self-conscious, because it was advertised in the press", she said.

Stoptober is a campaign organised by NHS Smokefree, which is designed to encourage people to stop smoking for 28 days during October this year. The DH will provide promotional materials for the campaign, which will be available to order from the Smokefree resource centre.

The campaign presented "opportunities for community pharmacies to do more proactive work on encouraging their patients to stop smoking", PSNC head of NHS services Alastair Buxton told C+D. "There's a public health element within essential services and that includes giving proactive advice to certain patients," he said. "We need to ensure that the whole profession can demonstrate that we are providing this element of the service."