Hospital staff's opinion on a smoke-free policy: A survey at the Léon-Bérard Cancer Center of Lyon, France

Abstract

Introduction The Centre Leon-Berard cancer center plans to become a “smoke-free hospital”, a place where it is strictly forbidden to smoke for anybody (patients, visitors, and staff) anywhere, even on the hospital grounds. This tobacco-free policy is in agreement with the 2016 INCa recommendations, which place smoking cessation as a part of cancer treatment. To assess smoking prevalence and collect patients’ and staff's opinion about the new policy, surveys were conducted. The results of the staff survey are presented here. Methods An anonymous questionnaire was distributed to the 1685 employees of the Centre Leon-Berard, and 611 (37%) answers were collected between June and September 2017, of which 312 from nursing staff, 155 from non-nursing staff and 137 from employees of the research department. Answers that were originally defined in an ordinal scale were transformed into quantitative scores from 1 = “disagree totally” to 4 = “agree totally”. Multiple linear regression models were used to analyze those answers, including respondents’ smoking status, department status (nursing, non-nursing or research), age and gender. Results Overall, 9.7% (n = 58) of the respondents smoked on a daily basis, 6.7% (n = 40) smoked occasionally, 15.7% (n = 94) were former smokers and 68% (n = 407) were nonsmokers. On average, daily and occasional smokers were younger than former and nonsmokers (respectively 34, 35, 38 and 42-years-old, P Conclusion Overall, employees of the Centre Leon-Berard cancer center seemed to be in favor of a smoke-free hospital. Nonetheless, this survey highlights differences of opinion between caregivers, non-nursing and research staff, especially on the role that should play the employees on the enforcement of that new policy. This study will be helpful for the organization of targeted preventive actions relying on the specific issues enlightened here.