The 13th World Conference on Tobacco OR Health

Objective: The objective of this study is to identify the attitudes and behaviour of medical staff and patients regarding smoking in order to better understand how involvement of Romanian medical personnel in the smoking prevention and reduction activities could be improved. The data were obtained through a cross sectional study carried out in 2004 among 110 patients and 281 subjects working in the medical field (both physicians and nurses)from 6 hospitals from Iasi

Methods: There were used anonymous questionnaire and the subjects were asked to complete them .

Results: The results show that the prevalence of current smoking is similar among both groups 26.8% among medical staff and 23.6% among their patients. Half of the patients believe that the smoking behaviour of physicians influence the behaviour of patients and around 80% of them recognize the role that physician could play in helping patients to quit smoking. Out of the smoking patients, one quarter admitted that they would quit if they would receive appropriate medical advice. At the same time, half of the medical personnel recognized the role of model played by physicians' behaviour regarding smoking for their patients. On the other hand, around 50% of the medical staff admitted that they do not want to be involved in activities of smoking prevention and cessation, mainly because of the lack of time as well as the insufficient competence in this field. This shows that more efforts are needed in order to train and motivate medical personnel in helping their patients to quit smoking.