Smoking attitudes amongst nursing tutors and their students

We have compared the smoking habits, and attitudes towards the habit, in 51 nurse tutors and 649 of their students. There were similar proportions of never-smokers, but rather more ex-smokers among the tutors. Only nine (17.6%) of the smoking and ex-smoking tutors admitted to having started smoking before the age of 18, compared with 75.5% of the students. Seven tutors and a similar proportion of students believed that smoking was not very harmful. Social behaviour differed between the two groups, the students tending to smoke in pubs and the tutors at home and over coffee. Reasons for having stopped also differed; in tutors cost was cited most often, whereas in students smell on clothes and future health damage ranked most highly. Cost, future health damage and smell were given as the main reasons for wanting to stop by smokers in both groups. We suggest that slightly different anti-smoking strategies might be required in students and tutors.