The 13th World Conference on Tobacco OR Health

Objective: In 2005, the Japanese government signed the WHO's FCTC, thereby, the fight against tobacco eradication has really started, although it is legally obliged to promote cigarette sales. In general, nurses are the greatest number of professionals in health care and have many opportunities to intervene with direct patient care. Therefore, they should play a more important role in anti-tobacco intervention. In the present study, we investigated whether smoking prevalence, attitudes and activities of nurses toward smoking, changed between 2002 and 2004 in female nurses working in Niigata university hospital in Japan.

Methods: The study was conducted by self-administered anonymous questionnaires about smoking status, attitudes and activities of nurses toward smoking. 423 out of 490 nurses in 2002, and 433 of 544 nurses in 2004 answered.

Results: Although smoking prevalence of nurses has declined from 16.0% in 2002 to 10.6% in 2004, the rates were much higher than those of general females (5.3% in 2003, in Niigata prefecture). The rate of nurses who agreed that “nurses should not smoke” was unexpectedly low (25.2% in 2002; 34.6% in 2004), and only 12% of nurses in 2002 and 22.4% of nurses in 2004 were routinely involved in anti-tobacco interventions. A lack of detailed knowledge and necessary skills are major barriers to anti-tobacco intervention, but a lack of working time is relatively not so. Greater efforts are needed to prioritize the education of nurses systematically and comprehensively about the variety of tobacco interventions available in Japan.