Smoking cessation services for health staff: Experiences of a university hospital in Izmir, Turkey

Abstract

Aim and objective Our aim was to explore possible changes in the ratio of a university hospital’s health professionals among patients applying to the smoking cessation clinic situated inside the same hospital and to compare the characteristics and procedure of these applicants with other cessation service users. Methods The smoking cessation clinic of the department of public health is situated among the outpatient clinics of Ege University Hospital and it is in operation since January 2016. In July 2017, the health and safety of health care workers unit of the hospital, which is another unit of the same department, has moved to the same location in the hospital. In August 2017, a public health specialist started working at the health and safety of health care workers unit and started to motivate health staff coming for periodic examinations to quit. Data on whether the applicants to the smoking cessation clinic were hospital staff has been recorded systematically from May 2017 on. The ratio of hospital staff among smoking cessation service users was compared in three-month intervals with the Chi square for trend analysis. The characteristics of hospital staff and other service users were compared with Chi square and Student t tests. Results Between May 2017 and June 2018, a total of 398 cessation service users’ data were evaluated, among whom 76 (19.1%) were the hospital’s own staff. Only 5.8% of service users were hospital staff in May-June 2017 compared to 20.5% in July 2017-June 2018 (p=0.011), which gradually increased as 13.5%, 14.9%, 25.6% and finally reaching 28.4% in April-June 2018 in three-month intervals, with a significantly increasing trend (p<0.001). The ratio of women was 59.5% among hospital staff using cessation services, as compared to 38.0% among others (p=0.001). The mean age of the hospital staff using cessation services was 39.8±8.5 and 40.1±13.9 for others (p=0.837). The mean duration of the first appointment was 43.2±9.2 minutes for hospital staff and 45.4±12.6 minutes for other applicants (p=0.186). Among the hospital staff, the mean duration of the first cessation interview was 44.3±9.8 minutes for health staff and 41.4±8.4 minutes for other staff (p=0.241). Conclusions Offering help to quit during periodic examinations and spatial vicinity to quit services seem to have significantly increased smoking cessation service use among health staff.

Keywords

• smoking cessation
• Izmir