Frequency of smoking among employees at a tertiary care children hospital, Karachi

ABSTRACT

To determine the frequency of smokers among employees at National Institute of Child Health, [NICH] Karachi. Total no. of 150 employees from NICH [including doctors, paramedics, administration staff, security staff, account staff, house keeping staff and others] participated in the study after giving verbal consent. A self-administered pre-coded proforma was used as an instrument to collect the information. A total no. of 150 health care professionals and others participated in the study. There were 111[74%] males, 39[26%] were females. The male to female ratio was 12.8. No female was found to be a smoker in our setting. 14.6% of smokers were in between 25-36 years of age. Frequency of smoking was found to be high in both Matric and MDBS categories i.e. 7.3% and 6.7% respectively. The frequency of smoking was found to be much higher [17%] in married males as compared to un-married employees [06%]. More than seventy percent [24] had started smoking in between 12-24 years of age. Around 44% of smokers used more than ten cigarettes per day. More than 97% of the participants were aware of potential health hazards of smoking. In our setting, overall frequency of smoking is still high [22.7%] in health care workers indicated it is that in spite of awareness regarding injurious effects of smoking, the health care professionals do not realize that smoking is one of the major causes of increase in morbidity and mortality due to respiratory and cardiac ailments