[Smoking habits among staff at the Rochefort-sur-Mer Hospital]

The aim of the study was to establish an inventory of staff in the hospital who smoked to allow better identification of people at risk and thus develop targeted preventive strategies, which we hoped would be more effective.

This survey was conducted at the Rochefort-sur-Mer Hospital in March 2008. The sociodemographic characteristics of the population responding and differences in characteristics between smokers and non-smokers were examined. The level of dependence of smokers and patterns of smoking in the workplace were also evaluated. The results were compared with those of the survey "Baromètre tabac personnel hospitalier 2003".

The response rate was 57%, with the study population characterized by a high proportion of women (82%). The proportion of smokers was 29%, similar to that found in the general population (30%) but higher than 24% of the survey of hospital staff Tobacco Barometer 2003. The hospital staff is still weakly dependent on tobacco. The attitude to smoking was strongly linked to socioeconomic group and the domestic staff and health care assistants were most likely to smoke and were also the most dependent. Finally, the hospital has itself become a smoke free environment without tobacco.

It is essential to promote measures to prevent smoking among hospital staff taking into account its specific features (high proportion of women). Targeted actions should in particular be conducted amongst the groups of workers who are the most affected.