Smoking status of students of medical school and factors affecting their smoking

Abstract

Aim and objective Tobacco epidemic among young people is defined as an important public health problem in developed and under-developing countries. Besides, the health problems brought by the cigarettes are not perceived enough by the adolescents and young people and they are ignored. The purpose of the study is to examine the smoking situation and the factors influencing students in a medical faculty. Methods This descriptive study covers a total of 126 students studying at a medical school between April and May 2018. 92.86% of the universe was reached. The data was collected by a questionnaire. Descriptive data are presented with percent, number, median. For further analysis, chi-square analysis was used. Results It was determined that those who participated in the study had a median age of 19.00 (min: 18.00, max: 24.00). 12.0% of the participants stated that they used cigarettes, 31.6% said they tried but did not use it for a long time. 17.0% stated that they use hookahs. It was found that 22.3% of smokers started smoking cigarettes at the median age of 17.00 (min: 9, max: 19), 31.3% of them started stress and 21.9% of them started out of curiosity they said. Most of the smokers had fathers who smoked cigarettes. This was statistically significant (p = 0.048). Conclusions Smoking rate increases in medical faculty students. It is suggested that medical students who will be role models as a medical doctor should be followed up in order to reduce the consumption of tobacco and get solved the reasons people start smoking.

Keywords

• smoking status
• students
• smoking