Study on abilities of smoking cessation services and its associated factors among Chinese physicians.

Objective To understand the abilities of providing smoking cessation services among Chinese physicians and the associated factors. Methods The study was conducted in all the 31 provinces (autonomous region,municipality) and Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps form Apr 2008 to Aug 2008. 96 sites of different levels (province,city,and county) were selected as our project fields. Simple random sampling was used to sample health facilities,and then physicians were also chosen as our subjects by simple random sampling. Results Among the physicians,45.2% reported that they usually or oftenly asked patients about the smoking conditions. 94.8% of the physicians would provide smoking cessation suggestion to the smoking patients,only 2.4% provided smoking cessation medication to patients. The result of Logistic regression showed that factors associated with actively providing smoking cessation advices included city,the level of hospital and department that the physician working at,as well as the gender,their education,smoking conditions and the knowledge about tobacco harms. Conclusion The physicians' consciousness of controlling smoking are absent and the capabilities of providing smoking cessation services need to be improved.