The 13th World Conference on Tobacco OR Health

Objective: The prevalence of tobacco use, the contributing factor of many noncommunicable diseases is very high in population of Serbia and Montenegro. Considering the health education role of health care professionals, it was of great importance to assess prevalence of tobacco use and related behaviours among them in order to create secondary prevention measures .

Methods: Survey was conducted among all of 2000 employees in Primary health care center "Novi Sad" by anonymously fulfilling specially designed questionarre.

Results: The response rate was 81,6% (1632 employees participated in survey). There were 14,6% men and 83,6% women mostly aged between 40-49 years. Among them 29,4% were doctors, 52,6% nurses and 18% others. There were 41% smokers, mostly among men (p=0.012) and nurses (p=0.001), 50% nonsmokers and 9% ex-smokers. The onset of tobacco use accured mostly at the age of 20. The reasons of smoking of those questioned were habit, pleasure and stress. The average number of daily smoking dose was about 20 cigarettes. About half of the smokers would like to quit smoking, mostly due to health related reasons. Considering related risky behaviours, 44.47% of questioned occasionally drank alcochol, more smokers (p=0.000), 86% of health care professionals regularly drank coffee, more smokers (p=0.000) and 1/3 were physically inactive, both smokers and nonsmokers. High smoking rate among health care professionals as potential health educators and related unhealthy lifestyles gives us the justification to create and implement health promotion program in primary health care settings which could have positive impact on common population.