Introduction:
Doctors should take the lead in tobacco control efforts. Practical skills training for cessation advice and counseling should be part of undergraduate medical education. To evaluate medical students’ opinions on the acceptance, difficulty level, self-confidence to intervene, and the utility of a brief tobacco cessation training for their future practice.

Methods:
The training was a B-learning: 1) World Health Organization (WHO) brief tobacco cessation e-learning and 2) a clinical workshop. A questionnaire-based cross-sectional study was applied to students engaged in the training. Fourth-year medical students who completed the B-learning were invited to answer the questionnaire adapted from the WHO original one. Setting: University of Beira Interior Medical School, Portugal.

Results:
Participants: 276; 71.4% female; mean age: 22.7 ± 2.9 years. The participation rate was 82.63%. Tobacco prevalence was 10.9%: 7.2 % in females and 20.3% in males, p=0.002. Most were non-daily users (94.9%). Regarding the training, 55.8% agreed and, 37.3% strongly agreed that the e-learning was useful for their practice. Similarly, 51.8% agreed, and 34.1% strongly agreed that the workshop was useful, p=0.008. The perceived usefulness of the workshop was higher among smokers than non-smokers, p= 0.027. Regarding self-confidence to intervene: 56.5% agreed, and 36.2% strongly agreed that e-learning improves their skills; 52.5% agreed, and 34.1% strongly agreed that the workshop also improves it, p=0.026. Concerning the difficulty level, 75.3% found the e-learning easy/very easy, while less (62.0%) found the workshop easy/very easy, p<0.001. Finally, 58.0% reported that the e-learning module was good, and 23.9% said it was excellent. For the workshop, 29% rated it as good, while 62.3% rated it as excellent.

Conclusions:
The findings suggest that medical students are aware of the role of undergraduate training in brief tobacco intervention and that this training improves their clinical skills. This type of B-learning should be widely implemented in medical schools.