Jordanian Physicians, Bad Role Models?
November 21, 2005According to a survey conducted by the WHO in 2004:
About 46% of the survey respondents stated that they had never smoked. 20% reported having successfully quit smoking, 7% smoked occasionally and only 27% smoked regularly. Those who smoked regularly consumed 19 cigarettes a day on average. Those who smoked occasionally smoked an average of 10 cigarettes per day. Among smokers who named a preferred brand, Viceroy and Marlboro were the most popular, named by 25% and 22% of respondents respectively. Rothmans and LM followed, at 10% each. The proportion of smokers among male respondents was almost twice as high as among female respondents, at 36.3% versus 19.3% respectively.
And on helping out patients by providing counselling, medications and assisting materials:
Physicians in Jordan agreed that health professionals should be and indeed are role models in their attitude to smoking. When combining the responses of those who “strongly agreed” and those who “agreed”, the opinion was nearly the same among smokers and non-smokers. Treated separately, agreement among non-smokers was stronger. There was a slight difference in agreement over the statement that physicians who smoke are less likely to advise their patients against smoking. While 77% of non-smokers “agreed” with this statement, only 70% of occasional or regular smokers did so.
On the availability of interventions to help patients stop smoking, counselling was the option reported as most available. Other interventions, such as medication or self-help materials were less readily available, with 3.3% and 21% of respondents reporting them as available, respectively. However, uptake, defined as use where available, was high for all three. The high uptake levels (69% for medications, 94% for self-help and 97% for counselling) suggest that health professionals use self-help, counselling and medication for their patients when they are available.
Health professionals’ assessment of their preparedness to offer smoking cessation counselling is a powerful predictor of whether they will offer it to patients. Among those who reported feeling “prepared” to counsel their patients on how to quit smoking, 86% did counsel their patients on the subject, 23% provided them with self-help material and 8% used medication. Of those who reported feeling “not at all prepared” to counsel their patients on smoking cessation, 36% counselled them, 10% provided self-help material and 4% used medication.
And what was the result of the survey?
Physicians in Jordan have excellent knowledge of the harms of smoking. They recognize the importance of non-smoking health professionals as role models to assist patients in quitting smoking. They also recognize the role models that health professionals represent to others.
When interventions are available, which was not usually the case in the survey, physicians offered a range of effective smoking cessation interventions to their patients. Expanding access to medication and self-help, coupled with improved smoking cessation counselling training for physicians, would expand coverage of effective smoking cessation interventions in Jordan.More than 75% of health professionals in Jordan, both smokers and non-smokers, consistently agreed with the need to implement the elements of comprehensive tobacco control. For all but price increases, support was virtually unanimous. Thus, physicians (especially non-smokers) in Jordan are well positioned to advocate for and support the implementation of comprehensive tobacco control.
every doctor i’ve ever met in jordan smokes. every hospital or clinic with 3,000 ‘no smoking’ signs everywhere has people smoking under it.
Comment by Nas — November 21, 2005 @ 5:43 PM
In mostashfa el-Basheer and probably all public hospitals, doctors smoke INSIDE the clinic while seeing patients. They smoke in the corridoers between patient rooms.
Comment by hareega — November 21, 2005 @ 5:46 PM
In mostashfa el-Basheer and probably all public hospitals, doctors smoke INSIDE the clinic while seeing patients. They smoke in the corridoers between patient rooms.
Comment by hareega — November 21, 2005 @ 5:46 PM
And how can this be stopped??
Comment by SugarCubes — November 21, 2005 @ 7:53 PM
It’s not easy to stop this. It’s mostly an ethica/behavioral problem froma physician to smoke in his clinic rather than an addictive problem.
His parents has to raise him well, and students in medical schools should receive some courses in ethics and behavioral science, and any doctor who smokes inside a clinic should have his licence suspended, but in jordan doctors are gods they are above the law.
Comment by hareega — November 22, 2005 @ 6:20 PM