In a bid to improve the nation's health, the National Health and Family Planning Commission has instructed doctors to ascertain if their patients have a history of smoking and to offer services designed to help smokers to kick the habit.

In a circular issued in February, the commission said that doctors who offer initial diagnoses should ask if the patient smokes, and offer at least brief intervention to help them quit.

Other doctors should also master skills to help patients quit smoking.

The enquiries into a patient's smoking history and the services offered to help them should be noted in their medical records, according to the circular.

Li Yanming, a doctor at the respiratory department of Beijing Hospital, said she hoped the circular would encourage her colleagues to introduce more patients to the hospital's smoking-cessation clinic.

The clinic, which is run by the respiratory department and is open once or twice a week, mainly receives patients with respiratory and cardiovascular conditions and diseases related to the endocrine system, such as diabetes, she said.

"These diseases are closely related to smoking, and the doctors are usually aware if their patients smoke and introduce them to the clinic," Li said. "Doctors in other departments don't pay as much attention to their patients' smoking habits. Also, patients with other conditions, such as acute diseases that aren't so closely linked to smoking, may not follow their doctor's advice to quit."

She welcomed the new regulation, but expressed concern that the enquiry and intervention may impose extra time pressure on already overworked medical staff.

"An enquiry and a brief intervention usually takes no more than one minute and won't overburden the doctors," said Xiao Dan, a doctor at the smoking-cessation clinic at Chaoyang Hospital in Beijing. "Doctors can improve their intervention skills through training."

"The attention doctors pay to a patient's smoking history is essential in persuading them to attempt quitting and succeed," Xiao said. "Research shows that intervention by a doctor, even if it lasts less than a minute, can improve the patient's chances of quitting."

Li said that tobacco control is too big a task for medical workers alone. "Usually a person's health has already been impaired by smoking when they come to us. As a public health issue, there should be greater efforts, such as national legislation and the promotion of anti-smoking materials, to increase public awareness to prevent people from taking up the habit," she said.