Somking and doctors a survey of trends and attitudes

The aim of this survey was to assess smoking trends and attitude towards smoking in doctors. Out of the total 86 doctors, 61[70.9%] males and 25[29.1%] females, the number of consultants and junior doctors was 21[24.4%] and 65[75.6%]. A total of 24[27.9%] doctors were smokers. Smoking was more popular among males 24[39.3%] and consultants 09[42.8%] than lady doctors [zero] and junior doctors 15[23.0%]. Other substance abuse was found in smokers only, 03[12.5%] among males smokers and zero among females while 01[11.1%] and 02[13.3%] in smoker consultants and junior doctors respectively. Among the smoker doctors 16[55.2%] and among the non-smoker doctors 27[47.4%] would always give their smoking patients a "stop-smoking" advice while the remaining doctors would, either sometimes or not at all, advise their patients to stop smoking. A supplementary question was included in another study, conducted by the same investigator on 275 university students to help assess doctors' contribution in reducing tobacco consumption in the community. The answers were analyzed in this study. Only 25% of the exsmokers gave up smoking on doctors' advice. Thus doctors don't have an accurate perception of smoking related diseases and so not only have high smoking rates but are also contributing insignificantly to reduce smoking in the community