Document Type

Working Paper

Rights

Available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike 4.0 International Licence

Disciplines

3. MEDICAL AND HEALTH SCIENCES, Health care sciences and services, Other medical sciences

Publication Details

Published by E.U. European Publishing on behalf of the European Network for Smoking and Tobacco Prevention (ENSP)

Abstract

INTRODUCTION Ireland has strong tobacco control legislation but must get smokers to stop if the national plan of having a smoking prevalence of 5% by the year 2025 is possible. Involving all healthcare staff in this effort is regarded as important. We surveyed the present situation. METHODS An online survey was conducted of 1257 healthcare staff; 520 nurses, 440 doctors, 297 dentists in 2014. The sample was accessed with the help of the Irish Nurses and Midwifes Organisation (INMO), Irish Medical Organisation (IMO) and the Irish Dental Association (IDA). The questionnaire addressed individual smoking habits and attitudes, training and practice with regard to smoking cessation. RESULTS The prevalence in our sample was 8.5%. Nurses had the highest prevalence. Doctors had the highest never smoked rate. Smoking was related to age. Attitudes to treating smoking were positive among all HCP groups. Overall 96.4% of HCPs agreed that they should routinely ask patients about smoking and 94% agreed that they should advise all smokers to quit. 20.7 % of HCPs said they had formal training in smoking cessation and this was correlated to asking or giving advice. 42.9% with training while only 7.6% without training felt well prepared to assist smokers quit (p

DOI

https://doi.org/10.18332/tpc/64946


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