Smoking patterns at different medical schools in Turkey

Abstract

Objective - To assess smoking-related be haviour, beliefs, and attitudes of students at different medical schools in Turkey, in comparison to those of students in non medical schools. Design - First- and final-year medical and nonmedical (science) students from seven universities located in different geographical areas in Turkey replied anonymously to an adapted World Health Organisation questionnaire in Turkish. Subjects - First-, fourth- and sixth (final) year medical students (total 3073) and first- and fourth- (final) year non medical students (total 2401) from dif ferent universities. Results - The prevalence of daily smok ing among first-year medical students (both sexes combined) was 11.8% (range 8.7-14.9% for the universities), signifi cantly lower than that of nonmedical first-year students (21.0%, range 12.1 28.4%) (p 0.05). Daily smoking prevalence for medical students was three times higher among males (30.5 %) than females (10.1 %), but was twice as high in nonmedical students (32.4% for males and 16.4% for females). A serious attempt to quit had been made by 45.0% of smokers in medical and 47.9% in nonmedical schools (p > 0.05); 30.6% of smokers in medical and 27.2% in non medical schools thought that they would no longer smoke in five years' time (p > 0.05). 87.9% of medical and 85.7% of nonmedical students believed smoking to be harmful to health. In medical schools, there were important defects in know ledge of smoking as a major cause of pulmonary emphysema, coronary artery disease, peripheral vascular disease, neo natal mortality, and bladder cancer. There were also important defects both in knowledge and motivation regarding counselling patients to stop smoking and the role of doctors in antismoking cam paigns. Legislative measures against smoking were equally likely to be sup ported by medical and nonmedical students. Conclusions - Smoking was much more prevalent among Turkish than among US, Australian, European, Asian (includ ing Japan but not Russia) and African medical students. This study indicates that the current system of medical edu cation in Turkey has little or no effect on the attitudes and behaviour of students regarding smoking.