Smoking Rate, Attitudes Toward Smoking and Smoking Cessation of Service Users in Sisaket Hospital

Abstract

Objective: Sisaket Hospital has announced a 100% smoking-free hospital since 2007 and has been certificated as Non-Smoking Outstanding Hospital in 2007, but still found the re-smokers who received treatment from quit-smoking clinic and service users smoke sneakily at out-of sight corners, especially at night in hospital area.
Setting: Sisaket hospital
Study design: Cross-sectional survey study
Method: The questionnaire was done in sample group between July 15, - August 20, 2552. Data analyzed and descriptive statistics presented by percentile mean, standard deviation, t-test and multiple regression.
Result: The result revealed that 26.9% of subjects were daily smoking, 22.6% occasional smoking, 63.0% occasional alcohol drinking, 58.8% had family members smoking, 71.4% acknowledged from the hospital signboard that Sisaket hospital is a non-smoking area, 65.5% known about quit-smoking clinic in Sisaket hospital, 94.8% want to use or recommend quit-smoking clinic, 44% of smokers want to quit smoking in short time. It was found that the factors of age, occupation, education, marriage status, monthly income, stress at work or living, alcohol drinking and family members smoking were statistically significant related to smoking behavior, while the status of service users was not. The overall level of attitudes toward smoking and discarding of the overall service users is good with a mean equal to 3.94. Their attitudes
toward the economic impact domain were higher than those on the health, social and work performance impact domains, respectively. The study in relationship between levels of attitudes toward smoking and population characteristics was found that social factors, status as patients relatives, health factors, regularly or occasionally smoking had negative association with smoking attitude on health, economic, performance and social domain. The factors as age 26-45 years, salary more than 10,000 baht, stress and quit-drinking were positive associated with attitudes toward smoking.
The results also demonstrated that relationship between level of attitudes toward smoking cessation in smoking samples and demographic factors such as quit-drinking and 46-55 years of age were positively correlated. Whereas relative status of the samples, occasional smoking, age more than 55 years, incomes 5,000-10,000 Baht and regular drinking had negative association to smoking cessation attitudes.
Conclusion: The 3 groups of samples had no different in smoking habits.
The economic impact was the highest attitude level, so the tobacco tax policy was a good way that the government should do together with smoking-hazard educational measure to reduce people's smoking. The aggressive operational strategy should focus on the patients'relatives, age between 46-55, and must go hand in hand with the stop drinking campaign.
Key words: Smoking rate, attitude toward smoking & smoking cessation