Knowledge, Attitude and Practice of Family Physicians Regarding Smoking Cessation Counseling in Family Practice Centers, Suez Canal University, Egypt

INTRODUCTION: Family physicians are the first point of medical contact for most patients, and they come into contact with a large number of smokers. Also, they are well suited to offer effective counseling to people, because family physicians already have some knowledge of patients and their social environments. AIMS: The present study was conducted to assess family physicians’ knowledge, attitude and practice of smoking cessation counseling aiming to improve quality of smoking cessation counseling among family physicians. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The study was descriptive analytic cross sectional study. It was conducted within family medicine centers. Sample was comprehensive. it included 75 family physicians. They were asked to fill previously validated anonymous questionnaire to collect data about their personal characteristics, knowledge, attitude and practice of smoking cessation counseling, barriers and recommendations of physicians. Equal or above the mean scores were used as cut off point of the best scores for knowledge, attitude and practice. STATISTICAL ANALYSIS: SPSS version 18 was used for data entry and statistical analysis. RESULTS: The best knowledge, attitude and practice scores among family physicians in the study sample were (45.3 %, 93.3% and 44% respectively). Age (P = 0.039) and qualification of family physicians (P = 0.04) were significant variables regarding knowledge scores while no statistically significance between personal characteristics of family physicians and their attitude or practice scores regarding smoking cessation counseling. More than half of the family physicians recommended training to improve their smoking cessation counseling. CONCLUSIONS: Favorable attitude scores of family physicians exceed passing knowledge scores or practice scores. Need for knowledge and training are stimulus to design an educational intervention to improve quality of smoking cessation counseling.