[Affecting factors of nicotine dependence in the smoker health workers]

Nicotine dependence is pointed out as the first reason of smoking behavior continuity and treatment failure. We investigated the nicotine dependence level (NDL) of health workers and the factors which affect it. We carried out the Fagerstrom test for nicotine dependence (FTND) and a questionnaire composed of 24 questions that evaluate demographic characters and the smoker ideas about smoking on health workers who staff at the a training hospital in Istanbul. NDL was not related with sex, age, education, marital status, child number and working time in health area (p> 0.05). There was correlation between NDL and daily smoked cigarette number (r= 0.71, p< 0.001). There was an opposite relationship among initiation age, regular use age and NDL (in order r= -0.16 and p= 0.013, r= -0.25 and p< or =0.001). 30% of the cases who had high NDL were smoking in everywhere of their home (p< 0.001). They also had high smoking ratios near surroundings of nonsmoker people (p= 0.003). The cases who had high NDL did not want to quit smoking (p= 0.028). Working in a hospital increased smoking ratio in 41.77% cases and did not affect the NDL (p= 0.3). It was thought that the cases that had high NDL did not take into consideration their surroundings and did not want to quit smoking. Health workers should be considered as a target population during antismoking campaigns, in order to make them willing in the struggle against tobacco.