Hospital doctors' attitudes toward giving their patients smoking cessation help

While guidelines recommend all doctors to ask their patients about their smoking habits and, in case they smoke, offer cessation advice, limited data are available about hospital doctors' attitudes toward these recommendations. We aimed to examine hospital doctors' attitudes toward asking their patients about their smoking habits, informing about the health benefits of stopping, and offering help to quit smoking.

A random sample (n = 1025) of Norwegian hospital doctors was mailed a questionnaire on this topic. After two reminders, 76% responded.

Among the respondents 23% of the doctors found it too time consuming to ask if the patient smoked, and approximately 35% found it too time consuming to inform or offer help on smoking cessation. About 25% of the doctors felt that they did not possess enough knowledge to help the patient to stop smoking, and 65% of the doctors preferred to refer to a specialist for this. Twenty-eight per cent of the doctors did not see it as their task to help the patient to stop smoking, while 32% did not think it is worth the effort to offer the patient help to stop smoking. Twice as many non-internists as internists regarded it as not their task to ask about smoking and advised on smoking cessation.

In conclusion, about one-quarter to one-third of Norwegian hospital doctors seem to disagree with current guidelines that all doctors should address their patients' smoking habits.