Tobacco – Use Prevalence, Exposure, Attitudes, Behaviour/Cessation, Curriculum among Health Professional Students in Mangalore City, Karnataka, India

BACKGROUND: Tobacco use is one of the leading preventable causes of premature death, disease and disability around the world. Medical and Dental graduates have an important role to play in tobacco cessation and prevention. Hence, the present study was undertaken to assess the tobacco use prevalence, practice, attitudes towards policy making and curriculum in medical and dental interns (house surgeons). METHODS: A cross sectional questionnaire based survey was carried out among interns in all the medical and dental colleges of Mangalore city. Global Health Professional Students Survey (GHPSS) questionnaire given by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) was modified and adopted. RESULTS: In the present study among 512 interns, 263 and 249 interns belonged to dental and medical fraternity respectively The prevalence of current smokers of cigarette was significantly higher among medical interns (32.1%) than the dental interns (20.2%), whereas no significant difference was evident amongst the dental (44.9%) and medical (41.8%) interns under the ever smokers category. A significant difference (p < 0.001) in the attitude of dental and medical college interns was observed towards tobacco use, policy making and their knowledge about the curriculum. CONCLUSION: This study shows health professionals lacking specific training in tobacco counseling, all of which indicate a need for including a standardized syllabus to train health professionals in medical and dental schools related to tobacco its ill-effects, cessation and policy making.