The knowledge and attitudes of the internal science assistants of the faculty of medicine about smoking cessation treatment

Abstract

Objective: Smoking is one of the leading causes of preventable death worldwide. The main drugs that act as an aid to smoking cessation include nicotin replacement, varenicline and bupropion. In this study, it was aimed to evaluate the knowledge and attitudes of internal department assistants of a medical faculty about smoking cessation treatment and to compare them with similar studies.

Methods: A questionnaire with 33 questions was developed, questioning the attitudes of physicians about smoking cessation and their knowledge about smoking cessation treatments. The questionnaires were applied to 60 internal department junior doctors on a voluntary basis. Mann-Whitney U test was used in two-level comparisons between groups, and Kruskal Wallis test was used in three-level comparisons. Spearman correlation analysis was used to examine the relationships between continuous variables. The analyzes were made in SPSS.23 program and p <0.05 was accepted as the significance value in all analyzes.

Results: It was found that the level of knowledge (85.66 ± 15.90) of the residents working in family medicine about smoking cessation treatment was higher than the junior doctors working in cardiology (59.82 ± 13.91) (χ2 (4) = 12.45, p= 0.014). However, there was no significant relationship between knowledge level score and gender, marital status, smoking status and number of children (p>0.05). 52 (86.7%) of the doctors questioned whether patients smoke or not, 58 (96.7%) recommended that they stop smoking if they smoke, and 43 (71.7%) referred the patients to smoking cessation outpatient clinics.

Conclusion: Doctors have important duties and responsibilities in the fight against smoking. The data obtained from the study suggest that the level of knowledge of residents about smoking cessation treatment was not sufficient. It is an important approach in the fight against smoking that the vast majority of resident doctors question their patients’ smoking status and advise them to quit smoking.