Abstract

Smoking is still one of the most dangerous and avoidable health risks. This study "Healthy air at work" analysed smoking habits, state of change, the influence of the diagnosis F.17.0 in patient treatment and estimation of subjective workloads and personal resources in health-care workers. Almost 2 000 questionnaires were analysed. 19.9% of this study population were smokers, while 26.4% were considered to be heavy or very heavy smokers. Half of the current smokers were willing to change, while the majority had already tried to quit multiple times. The most important motive to stop smoking was fear of consequences (44.4%), followed by other reasons (42.3%) (e. g., pregnancy) and expenses (33.9%). Protection against second-hand smoke was estimated mostly as very relevant, especially for patients. Being a role model in terms of tobacco consumption seems to be important for health-care workers. 61.3% of all health-care workers stated that patients' nicotine dependency had been diagnosed and out of these 46.5% say it is a relevant factor in therapy. 60% of all interviewed employees evaluated themselves as working quantitatively under heavy and very heavy workloads, while 20% had to deal with high qualitative challenges. In terms of future work ability and personal resources 75% were considerably optimistic. We did not find any relation in terms of workloads and smoking habits. Rather few health-care workers used nicotine replacement therapy during former cessation trials. Health-care workers could play an important role in the treatment and prevention of smoking dependency. This potential is not used to its full extent up to now.

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