Abstract
Smoking status, knowledge and attitudes toward smoking cessation among general hospital worker
Background: Smoking is strongly associated with severe illness from which a burden to society’s health care system is resulted. As a representative of health institution, general hospital is responsible for promoting safe and healthy environment and the aim of study is to investigate smoking status, awareness and attitudes toward smoking cessation among hospital workers
Methods: This study was conducted on 949 employees who work at Tertiary Medical Center in Seoul including healthcare providers and non-practitioner with unsigned self-reported questionnaires from April 2014 to May 2014 .
Results : 14.6% of total respondents have experience of smoking. (8.4% of respondents were current smokers.) In smoking group, majority of the population were male (98.7%) and non-health care provider group (94.2%). They showed higher level of stress and lower satisfaction of their career and revealed high frequency of attempt to stop smoking (more than once, 83.5%), while the level use of anti-smoking education(31.6%) and medical treatment was low(24.8%).
Compared with non smokers, smoking group presented negative attitude toward effectiveness of education and view on designation of smoke-free area within hospital. In multiple regression analysis, odd to respond that the entire hospital shall be smoke-free following adjustment of gender, age, and working department was 3.82 for ex-smokers and 7.04 for non-smokers..
Conclusions: Our study suggests smoking group among hospital employee with insufficient information have unfavorable attitudes toward smoking cessation. Further intervention suitable for this hospital workers is needed to help them stop smoking and make totally smoke-free hospital.