Smoking habits of nurses and midwives.

A study was designed to examine the hypothesis that increased awareness of the health hazards of smoking aids smoking cessation in female health care workers. One hundred and thirteen nurses and midwives completed a questionnaire about their smoking habits. When the group was tested as a whole against the national average for the same socio-economic group, it was found that there was a strong similarity between the subject's smoking habits and the national average. However, when the nurses and midwives were separated into two groups, the nurses smoked significantly more than the national average, whereas the midwives smoked significantly less. In addition, there was an intriguing finding that a highly significant number of the midwives had never smoked compared to the national average.