Survey on Current Status of Smoking and Smoking-related Knowledge Among Medical Staff Members of a Hospital in Hunan

Objective To explore the prevalence of smoking behavior and the smoking-related knowledge and attitude in medical professionals. Methods We designed a smoking-related questionnaire according to the smoking-related materials.Cluster sampling method was applied to conduct a survey of smoking on 578 medical professionals of a hospital in Hunan in October,2010. Results The current smoking rate of medical professionals was 19.38%, and the rate of smoking was 33.64% in males and 1.56% in females.There were statistically significant differences in the smoking rates of medical staff members with different gender,age,educational backgrounds and professional titles(P0.05).As for the smoking-related knowledge and attitude,medical professionals knew the common hazards,such as pulmonary diseases easily resulted from smoking and passive smoking;but there were still 22.49% medical professionals knew little about the harmful effects of smoking and passive smoking on other organs.Most of the medical professionals thought that smoking was de rigueur and it could relieve the stress. Conclusions Smoking behavior is a serious problem among male medical workers,especially smoking behavior of staff members of medical institutions,which brings negative effects on the surrounding people.It is necessary to enhance the tobacco control in medical institutions and create tobacco-free environment in hospitals so as to be a role model and play a support role in the tobacco control work.