Smoking cessation: Two sides of the story

Abstract

This study is aimed to investigate how the physicians working at Celal Bayar University Hospital act towards the patients who smoke. A questionnaire for the physicians and another one for the patients were prepared. 119 physicians from different departments answered the questionnaire and 91.6 % of them told that they were asking questions about smoking habits of their patients, 92.4 % told that they were offering their patients to quit smoking, 62.2 % told that they were giving information about smoke cessation methods and 44.5 % about withdrawal symptoms. Among 748 patients, 48.9 told that their doctor asked if she/he smokes, 31.4 % told their doctors offered quitting. 20.3 % told that their doctor gave information about the harms of smoking, 6.8 % about cessation methods, 4.7 % about the withdrawal symptoms and 1.3 % told that their doctor proposed a treatment about smoke cessation The results of this study showed a discordance between patients' and physicians' answers. The possible explanations for this could be that 1. the physicians do not give much importance to smoking problem, 2. they do not have enough knowledge and skill about the topic and 3. physicians and patients have problems of understanding each other.