Doctors’ smoking control knowledge, attitudes and practices: a cross-sectional study conducted in Shandong Province, China

BACKGROUND: Doctors play an important role in smoking control. This study aimed to assess doctors’ smoking control knowledge, attitudes and practices to help doctors raise awareness of smoking control assistance. METHODS: This cross-sectional study recruited 1046 doctors from Shandong Province, China, by using multistage sampling. Participants’ information was collected by questionnaire. Pearson’s χ(2) test and Fisher’s exact probability method were used to compare the distributions of categorical variables between/among groups. RESULTS: Among the participants, 14.7% were current smokers. Approximately 50.3% of participants had heard of smoking cessation drugs and 59.2% of participants thought that low-tar and low-nicotine cigarettes were as harmful to health as common cigarettes. Approximately 98.2 and 60.9% of participants agreed that smoking was related to lung cancer and male sexual dysfunction, respectively. Although 72.0% of participants believed that doctors should actively provide smoking cessation assistance, only 58.1% of participants considered that doctors should be responsible for providing smoking cessation assistance. Similarly, 85.2% of participants often asked about the smoking history of patients or their family members, while only 4.9% of participants had prescribed smoking cessation drugs for patients. Pediatricians had a higher proportion of “Agree” responses to the assessment items than doctors in other departments. CONCLUSIONS: The results showed that doctors in Shandong Province did not have sufficient knowledge of smoking control. Slightly more than half of doctors thought that providing smoking cessation assistance was their responsibility. Only a few participants had prescribed smoking cessation drugs.