Background: Tobacco smoking is one of the leading causes of preventable death world-wide. Health care workers including physicians play an important role in the identification, assessment, and treatment of smokers. The present study was done to assess the level of knowledge, attitude, and practices of smoking cessation counseling among family physicians in Al-Ahsa.
Materials and Methods: It was a cross sectional survey involving all the Family medicine trainees recruited for Saudi Board of Family Medicine (SBFM) residency of Al Ahsa region of Saudi Arabia. The data were collected using predesigned, tested and self-administered questionnaires regarding assessment of smoking attitude The questionnaires also included questions on knowledge and smoking cessation counseling. After collection the data were analyzed using SPSS version 23.0. The mean was calculated and used as a cut off for good and poor attitude towards smoking prevention and anti-smoking counseling and knowledge about the harmful effect of smoking. The chi-squared test was used to assess the relationship between basic information and knowledge and attitude scores. A p-value of < 0.05 was considered to be statistically significant.
Result:A total of 120 participants participated in the study. The mean age of the participants was 28.39years ± 2.96 (SD). More than forty one percent (41.7%) of the participants was male. Ninety one percent of the participants were non-smoker while 2% and 7% were ex-smoker and smoker respectively. Overall attitude (4.3± 0.17) of the participants towards smoking prevention and anti-smoking counseling was strongly positive .The majority of the participants in our study were of the opinion that cigarette sell should be prohibited to those under the age of 15years of age. Non-smoker participants in our study have shown a better attitude towards the anti-smoking statement. Male participants in our study were significantly more successful in persuading the patients to quit smoking. Non-smoker family physicians in our study supported the view that doctors should set a good example by notsmoking which was statistically more significant than that of smoking physicians view. The overall knowledge of the participants for the harmful effect of smoking was good with a mean score of 8.1±1.21 SD.
Conclusion: The present study showed a comparatively low level of smoking among the family medicine residents in our study. The majority of them were in favor of banning cigarette smoking for the people under age 15 and at the public places. The smoker family physicians showed comparatively negative attitude towards counseling the patient to quit smoking. In spite of the fact that family physicians in our study had sound knowledge about the harm of smoking, majority of them wanted more training on counseling the patients to quit the smoking. Further interventional researches are required to improve and reevaluate quality of smoking cessation counseling using direct observation of practice.
