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An international review of tobacco smoking in the medical profession: 1974–2004

BACKGROUND: Tobacco smoking by physicians represents a contentious issue in public health, and regardless of what country it originates from, the need for accurate, historical data is paramount. As such, this article provides an international comparison of all modern literature describing the tobacc...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Smith, Derek R, Leggat, Peter A
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2007
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1906758/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17578582
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-7-115
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author Smith, Derek R
Leggat, Peter A
author_facet Smith, Derek R
Leggat, Peter A
author_sort Smith, Derek R
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Tobacco smoking by physicians represents a contentious issue in public health, and regardless of what country it originates from, the need for accurate, historical data is paramount. As such, this article provides an international comparison of all modern literature describing the tobacco smoking habits of contemporary physicians. METHODS: A keyword search of appropriate MeSH terms was initially undertaken to identify relevant material, after which the reference lists of manuscripts were also examined to locate further publications. RESULTS: A total of 81 English-language studies published in the past 30 years met the inclusion criteria. Two distinct trends were evident. Firstly, most developed countries have shown a steady decline in physicians' smoking rates during recent years. On the other hand, physicians in some developed countries and newly-developing regions still appear to be smoking at high rates. The lowest smoking prevalence rates were consistently documented in the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom. Comparison with other health professionals suggests that fewer physicians smoke when compared to nurses, and sometimes less often than dentists. CONCLUSION: Overall, this review suggests that while physicians' smoking habits appear to vary from region to region, they are not uniformly low when viewed from an international perspective. It is important that smoking in the medical profession declines in future years, so that physicians can remain at the forefront of anti-smoking programs and lead the way as public health exemplars in the 21(st )century.
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spelling pubmed-19067582007-07-04 An international review of tobacco smoking in the medical profession: 1974–2004 Smith, Derek R Leggat, Peter A BMC Public Health Review BACKGROUND: Tobacco smoking by physicians represents a contentious issue in public health, and regardless of what country it originates from, the need for accurate, historical data is paramount. As such, this article provides an international comparison of all modern literature describing the tobacco smoking habits of contemporary physicians. METHODS: A keyword search of appropriate MeSH terms was initially undertaken to identify relevant material, after which the reference lists of manuscripts were also examined to locate further publications. RESULTS: A total of 81 English-language studies published in the past 30 years met the inclusion criteria. Two distinct trends were evident. Firstly, most developed countries have shown a steady decline in physicians' smoking rates during recent years. On the other hand, physicians in some developed countries and newly-developing regions still appear to be smoking at high rates. The lowest smoking prevalence rates were consistently documented in the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom. Comparison with other health professionals suggests that fewer physicians smoke when compared to nurses, and sometimes less often than dentists. CONCLUSION: Overall, this review suggests that while physicians' smoking habits appear to vary from region to region, they are not uniformly low when viewed from an international perspective. It is important that smoking in the medical profession declines in future years, so that physicians can remain at the forefront of anti-smoking programs and lead the way as public health exemplars in the 21(st )century. BioMed Central 2007-06-20 /pmc/articles/PMC1906758/ /pubmed/17578582 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-7-115 Text en Copyright © 2007 Smith and Leggat; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0) ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Review
Smith, Derek R
Leggat, Peter A
An international review of tobacco smoking in the medical profession: 1974–2004
title An international review of tobacco smoking in the medical profession: 1974–2004
title_full An international review of tobacco smoking in the medical profession: 1974–2004
title_fullStr An international review of tobacco smoking in the medical profession: 1974–2004
title_full_unstemmed An international review of tobacco smoking in the medical profession: 1974–2004
title_short An international review of tobacco smoking in the medical profession: 1974–2004
title_sort international review of tobacco smoking in the medical profession: 1974–2004
topic Review
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1906758/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17578582
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-7-115
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