Abstract
General practitioners' (GPs') advice against smoking has a small, beneficial effect on patients' smoking. Consequently, GPs have been urged to adopt a population-based approach to advice-giving that involves discussing smoking repeatedly with the maximum possible number of smokers. This discussion paper assesses how far GPs' current clinical practice is from a population-based approach to advice-giving and finds that GPs prefer a problem-orientated approach to advising those who present with smoking-related problems. Discussion focuses on the feasibility of suggesting that GPs adopt a population-based approach instead.
