The 13th World Conference on Tobacco OR Health

Objective: It is well-known that even brief advice from physician significantly increase the quit-rate among smoking patients. It should be the goal of every health professional to motivate smoking patient to stopsmoking, even though this may appear difficult to achieve in particular cases. In Korea, most of physicians and medical students are not adequately trained to treat 'smoking cessation', although smoking rate adult men is so high such as 53% in this year.

Methods: During 4years from 2002 to 2005, we developed and implemented training curricular about the intervention of smoking cessation and practice for 8~16 weeks in 2nd grade medical students. The curricula included epidemiology of tobacco use, prevention, risk of tobacco-related disease, nicotine dependency, biological addiction, motivational interviewing, pharmacotherapy, counseling skills, relapse prevention, due to weight gain, exercise prescription and cognitive behavior therapy for stress management. Pre and Post learning sessions, every year 120medical students participated self-administrative questionnaires about knowledge and attitude of smoking cessation intervention based on 5A's scale(Ask, Advise, Assess the willingness, Assist and Arrange the follow-up).

Results: In all participants the scores of knowledge and attitude about treatment the smoking habit were improved. Especially the trends of improvement in the attitudes of clinical intervention as physician about smoking cessation yearly increased, We found out the importance of practical instruction and practical experience for successful developments of knowledge and attitude about smoking cessation in clinical setting. We also suggest great attention to tobacco prevention and intervention by well-trained future physician with effective tobacco curricula in the medical schools.