[Respiratory physicians' knowledge, attitude and practice of tobacco control and their smoking status in the city of Chongqing].

OBJECTIVE

To investigate the smoking status, knowledge of smoking hazards, attitude of tobacco control and skill of assisting smoking cessation in respiratory physicians in the city of Chongqing and therefore to provide references for their further participation in social tobacco control.

METHODS

With a self-designed questionnaire, a cross-sectional study was conducted on respiratory physicians of 8 hospitals in Chongqing, which were selected with stratified random sampling method. All the data were inputted with software Epidata 3.1 and were analyzed with SPSS 13.0.

RESULTS

A total of 428 valid questionnaires were retrieved, with a valid rate of 95.1% (428/450). The total smoking rate was 12.4% (95%CI: 9.3% - 15.5%), with 7.4% in physicians of teaching hospitals, 8.13% in those of hospitals located in urban areas, and 19.0% in those of hospitals located in suburban district counties. The differences in smoking rates in the respiratory physicians among different hospitals showed statistical significance (χ(2) = 11.734, P = 0.014). The smoking rate of the male was higher than that of the female. Of the surveyed doctors, 80.14% had awareness that tobacco dependence was a neuropsychiatric disease characterized as nicotine addiction, while 34.8% claimed that they had no idea about quitting smoking drugs. Although all participants claimed that they knew the harm of secondhand smoke, 16.36% of them still had never come forward to prevent smoking behavior in hospitals. There was only 27.4% of the surveyed discouraging smoking behavior with the reason of unwillingness to breath in secondhand smoke, while 53.9% of the surveyed discouraged smoking behavior because of regulations of hospitals. Most of the surveyed did relatively well in routinely inquiring and recording the smoking status of patients, but only 27.1% of them had recommended specific quitting smoking methods to patients, and there were few successful cases in practice. The situations of smoking cessation assistance in hospitals located in urban areas and suburban district counties were better than that in teaching hospitals.

CONCLUSIONS

The smoking rate of the respiratory physicians (especially male doctors) in Chongqing is high. There is lack of enthusiasm in preventing smoking behavior in public area of hospitals. The knowledge and skills of smoking cessation are lacking as well. Therefore more training programs for smoking control are needed. Respiratory physicians in primary hospitals or community health centers can play a more important role in smoking control.