Abstract

BORGES, André et al. Smoking habits of sixth year medical students and anti-smoking measures in Portugal. Rev Port Pneumol [online]. 2008, vol.14, n.3, pp.379-390. ISSN 0873-2159.

Objectives: To study the smoking habits of 6^th year Portuguese medical students and assess their knowledge and acceptance of anti-smoking measures and how they felt these would impact on public health. Material and methods: We conducted a descriptive cross-sectional study, in which a self-administered, anonymous questionnaire was made available online to the target population (6^th year Portuguese medical students). The relationships between some of the variables were analysed using contingency tables and the χ² test, with p<0.05 taken as statistically significant. Results: We obtained 255 answers to our questionnaire. We found an 18.04% prevalence of smokers. The majority of smokers smoked 1 - 10 cigarettes per day, with men smoking more, and most of them had begun their habit between 13 and 18 years of age, with women beginning later. 36.96% of smokers had already made an attempt to quit smoking. The great majority of the respondents agreed with the anti-smoking measures listed in the questionnaire. Furthermore, they expected these measures to have a positive impact on smoking and on smokingrelated morbidity and mortality. Only 34.90% of the students judged smoking cessation to be sufficiently taught in their curricula. Conclusions: The results are in accordance with the population in general in terms of the prevalence of smokers, the age of beginning smoking and a high prevalence of women smokers. There appears to be across-the-board agreement with anti-smoking measures, along with hope for a reduced general and individual consumption and morbi-mortality.

Keywords : Medical students; smoking habits; smoking ban; medical education.

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