Doctors and medical students as non-smoking role models? Using the right arguments

Abstract

Walking towards the impressive entrance of the University Medical Center in Groningen, a smell of tobacco drifts towards the visitor. Despite referral to designated smoking areas, the attraction of the proximity of the revolving door remains irresistible. Lacking from the crowds of smokers at the entrance are white coats. One message at least has come across: no welcoming committee of smoking doctors and nurses at the front door. The hospital staff are allowed to nurse their addictions but only out of sight. The entrance of the medical school at the other side of the terrain shows some scattered smokers. This picture mirrors the results of an online survey that suggests that 94% of medical students in the Netherlands are non-smokers.1 It seems that (future) Dutch health professionals are role models. Many people support the idea that health professionals ought to be positive health role models. Smith and Leggat concluded that: ‘It is important that smoking in the medical profession declines in future years, so that physicians can remain at the forefront of anti-smoking programs and lead the way as public health exemplars in the 21st century’.2 Why do we expect health professionals to be better at health behaviour than other people? Smit and Leggat argue: ‘Doctors incur a certain responsibility as exemplars for patients with regard to healthy behaviour, as well as the public image they inadvertently portray outside of the work environment. Having any physicians who smoke may increase public scepticism, with people inclined to ask why should they stop smoking when their doctor continues to do so? Continued tobacco usage by health care workers undermines the message to smokers that quitting is important, and as early as 1976 it was suggested that physicians could best persuade patients to quit if …