Abstract
BackgroundDoctors play an important role in smoking control. This study aimed to assess doctors’ smoking control knowledge, attitudes and practices to help doctors raise awareness of smoking control assistance.MethodsThis cross-sectional study recruited 1046 doctors from Shandong Province, China, by using multistage sampling. Participants’ information was collected by questionnaire. Pearson’s χ2 test and Fisher’s exact probability method were used to compare the distributions of categorical variables between/among groups.ResultsAmong the participants, 14.7% were current smokers. Approximately 50.3% of participants had heard of smoking cessation drugs and 59.2% of participants thought that low-tar and low-nicotine cigarettes were as harmful to health as common cigarettes. Approximately 98.2 and 60.9% of participants agreed that smoking was related to lung cancer and male sexual dysfunction, respectively. Although 72.0% of participants believed that doctors should actively provide smoking cessation assistance, only 58.1% of participants considered that doctors should be responsible for providing smoking cessation assistance. Similarly, 85.2% of participants often asked about the smoking history of patients or their family members, while only 4.9% of participants had prescribed smoking cessation drugs for patients. Pediatricians had a higher proportion of “Agree” responses to the assessment items than doctors in other departments.ConclusionsThe results showed that doctors in Shandong Province did not have sufficient knowledge of smoking control. Slightly more than half of doctors thought that providing smoking cessation assistance was their responsibility. Only a few participants had prescribed smoking cessation drugs.
Highlights
Doctors play an important role in smoking control
We aimed to assess the factual representations of doctors registered in Shandong Province in smoking control based on their knowledge, attitudes and practices about smoking control, which may be able to fill the previous research gap and raise doctors’ awareness of smoking control assistance
Specific knowledge of the smoking-related harms associated with medical conditions can be learned in medical universities but the most common knowledge of smoking-related harms is learned in special training on smoking control
Summary
This study aimed to assess doctors’ smoking control knowledge, attitudes and practices to help doctors raise awareness of smoking control assistance. Smoking is a preventable risk factor for many noncommunicable diseases [1]. Approximately 20% of people aged ≥15 years were current smokers in 2015 [2]. Tobacco is responsible for seven million deaths annually [3]. In China, there are up to 300 million smokers [4]. According to the report of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 50.5% of males aged ≥15 years in China were smokers in 2018 [5]. There were up to 1 million deaths related to smoking in China [6]. It is urgent to help smokers quit smoking, especially in China
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