Smoking rate high among physicians in training, those who work long hours

MONTREAL — Physicians appeared more likely to smoke as they trained for a specific specialty and when they worked long hours, according to results of a survey presented at CHEST Annual Meeting 2015.

"The results showed that about 27% of the participants admitted to being current smokers — a number I think is too high, especially for health care professionals," Angelo T. Adraneda, MD, a pulmonologist at Chinese General Hospital in the Philippines, told Healio.com/Pulmonology. "The number one reason [physicians smoke] is stress brought about by the kind of work and, to a lesser degree, the long duty hours. One particular area of concern actually is that about 60% claimed that their smoking increased when they started taking up specialty training."

Adraneda distributed a survey sheet with questionnaires adapted from the Global Health Professional Survey by the World Health Organization (WHO) and The Wisconsin Inventory of Smoking Dependence Motives to physicians undergoing specialty training in hospitals in Metro Manila.

The analysis included 557 completed surveys. More than half of the participants (57.45%) reported never smoking and 27.83% reported that they currently smoked.

Physicians training for surgery had the highest prevalence of smoking (39.62%) among the survey respondents.

Among the duty groups, the highest prevalence of smoking was noted on those who are currently on every two days duty schedule, according to Adraneda.

"Measures have to be done in order to cut down the number of health care professionals who smoke," Adraneda told Healio.com/Pulmonology. "A good target may be stress-relieving measures like adjusting work schedules. Cutting down the number of physicians who smoke, in my opinion, will have a great impact on promoting anti-smoking programs among the general population." – by Ryan McDonald

Reference:

Adraneda AT. Abstract 202644. Presented at: CHEST Annual Meeting 2015; Oct. 24-28; Montreal.

Disclosure: Adraneda reports no relevant financial disclosures.