Shocking Percent of Physicians Still Smoking

Healthcare providers are supposed to be one of the top advocates for no smoking, right? Well the amount of physicians still lighting up cigarettes is prevalent.

Angelo T. Adraneda, MD, from the Chinese General Hospital in the Philippines, and colleagues aimed to find how many physicians going through specialty training are smoking. The data will be presented during a poster session at CHEST 2015 in Montréal, Canada.

The team looked at 557 physicians in specialty training in Manila, Philippines. They filled out questionnaires developed from the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Global Health Professional Survey and The Wisconsin Inventory of Smoking Dependence Motives (WISDM-68).

On a high note, the majority of the physicians (57.45%) in the study reported never being smokers. However, too many revealed that they are current smokers (27.83%). Of those, physicians in specialty training for surgery proved to have the most smokers (39.62%).

Specialty training is a major factor contributing the high statistics, according to the report. Although a lesser major factor, duty hours are also a contributor.

“Data collected showed that those with family members, immediate superiors, and colleagues who smoke are more likely to smoke as well,” the team pointed out.

This is one practice that no doctor, or person for that matter, should start or continue.

“Hopefully, with the results of this study, it could help reduce the number of smokers or cigarette consumption by improving work schedules among these health care professionals — making them worthy promoters of smoking cessation programs,” the researchers concluded.