How To Help Your Patients Quit With The TQ Apps

Examples of How To Use the TQ App During Patient Appointments

1. Motivate Your Patients: Money and Health

Your patients are probably telling you that cigarettes and dip are getting expensive, but ironically when they are spending a few dollars a day they often miss the snowballing monetary impact of tobacco use. Enter a couple of values into TQ Money Saver App and tell your patients how much money they will save in weeks, months, years, and decades if they quit. On the same screen, TQ Money Saver App shows how many cigarettes or dips they won’t use at those same times. Most patients are astonished when you tell them just how much they will smoke or dip if they don't quit.

2. Convince Them Quitting Aids Are Affordable

Almost universally, when we start talking about quitting aids with patients they start saying they can’t afford them. Until the day when quitting aids are free or covered by insurance (we’re not holding our breath), most quitters are going to have to pay for some or all of their quitting aids out-of-pocket. Input the cost of a month of quitting aid and the length of treatment into the TQ Money Saver App and you can tell your patient how much they are spending, how much the aid will cost, and what the difference/savings is.

3. Keep Up With The Cost of Quitting Aids

When is the last time you visited the pharmacy and memorized the prices of the two dozen or so NRT products? Most health care professionals don’t have the desire or time to remember the prices of all the NRT products, Chantix/varenicline, and Wellbutrin/bupropion. And prices are always changing. Yet when we are trying to convince patients to quit, we really need to speak knowledgeably about treatment costs. The TQ Money Saver provides a web link directly in the App to our Price Checker, so you will be armed with current pricing information to most effectively discuss costs with your patients.

4. Determine Addiction Levels

We run nicotine dependence assessments with all our tobacco using patients. At the core of the TQ Addiction Calculator is the Fagerstrom test for nicotine dependence for both cigarettes and smokeless tobacco. Use the output screen from the TQ Addiction Calculator as a guideline for discussions about nicotine addiction and make quitting recommendations to your patients.

5. Teach Non-Cigarette Tobacco Users About Nicotine Levels

Unless you have had a lot of training in tobacco treatment, you probably struggle with what to tell patients who use snuff, snus, starter pouches; smoke hookas, use cigars, etc., about nicotine content. Even if you have had a lot of training, the TQ Nicotine Calculator makes estimating levels of nicotine in blood quick and easy for every major tobacco product.

6. Calculate Nicotine Equivalence in Cigarettes

We find that most people can comprehend nicotine intake more easily when we give them a frame of reference like number of cigarettes smoked per day. Ask your patient what type and quantity of tobacco they use and the TQ Nicotine Calculator will equate it to the nicotine content in cigarettes. This makes it easy for you to talk to them about their health and dependence levels.

7. Calculate Nicotine Equivalence in Nicotine Replacement Therapy

One of the most helpful features of the TQ App Bundle is the part of the TQ Nicotine Calculator that equates the amount of tobacco a patient uses to the approximate amount of nearly every nicotine replacement product. Although this feature doesn’t determine how you should dose the patient, it’s a quick and easy way to get an idea about nicotine equivalence in NRT. You can use this, along with other dosage indicators, to help your patient choose an appropriate product.

8. Get The Patient To Track Intake and Cravings:

Unless you smoke or dip yourself, you may wonder why you need the Quit Tracker, or how the Quit Tracker is going to help you help your patients quit. No mater what stage of quitting a patient is in, we want them to track their intake and craving levels during the time leading up to their quit day and throughout treatment (even if they are not ready to quit, we want them to start tracking their daily intake). And while it might seem like a shameless promotion, encourage them to purchase the TQ App Bundle and start using the Quit Tracker. We find it extremely helpful to have patients report their Quit Tracker log data back to us at follow-up appointments or communications. Just having the Quit Tracker will be a visual reminder for you to tell them to start logging their intake and cravings.

9. Tell Us How You Use It With Your Patients

These are just a few of the ways the TQ App will save you time; change your interaction with tobacco using patients; and help you help your patients quit smoking, dipping, or using any form of tobacco. We would be thrilled to know how you are using the TQ App with your patients. Please send us your thoughts.