Evaluation of Knowledge, Attitudes, Behaviors and Frequency of Smoking among Medical Students of Duzce University

WOS: 000419627200014Objective: An active, faithful and continuous support of health providers plays essential role in reducing the smoking rates. Studies prove that smoking rates are most successfully reduced in countries where the smoking rates of physicians are the lowest. In this study, we aimed to investigate the smoking prevalence, the knowledge, attitude and associated risk factors of smoking among the term I and VI students of Duzce University School of Medicine. Methods: This study is a cross-sectional descriptive study that is composed of 198 medical students studying during the 2016-2017 academic year. The questionnaire determined students' smoking habits, knowledge on smoking cessation policies and questioned about the current status of smoking cessation education in medical faculties. Results: The rate of smokers was 18.26% in term I students and 21.27% in term VI. Most of the smokers (61.7% (n: 29)) were smoking before the faculty; the rest of them (36.2% (n: 17)) had started smoking at the medical faculty. A significant relationship was found between smoking and advanced class, smoking permission in the living environment, and smoking among friends. Conclusion: The most important finding of our study was that there is a certain percentage of smokers among the students of medical faculty, and these rates increase within time, from the class I to the class VI. The other important point that was noticed in our study was that medical students were not properly acknowledged during medical education about smoking and its harm, and also the students were not properly aware of mission of smoking cessation policlinics