Tobacco use and attitudes on tobacco control among faculty members of a medical school in Northern Cyprus (tobacco use among medical teachers)

The smoking prevalence of medical faculty members has not been a subject of research as frequently as physicians and medical students. The objective of this study was to determine the status of tobacco use and some attitudes among medical faculty members of a Northern Cyprus university. The data were collected by a questionnaire of 22 questions, developed in compliance with WHO guidelines. The data were analyzed using IBM-SPSS 23.0 with p < .05 evaluated as significant. For this cross-sectional study, 128 members of the 146 academics responded (response rate of 87.7%). Lifetime smoking frequency was 46.9%. Current smokers comprised 21.9% while 7.0% consumed non-cigarette products with overall tobacco use of 26.6%. Of the smokers, 52.9% had started smoking at medical school. Regarding doctors being nonsmoking role models, positive attitudes were expressed significantly more by non-smokers than smokers. Only 33.8% were covering tobacco control in their teaching programs while 86.5% had positive attitudes for comprehensive tobacco control in the curriculum. The medical faculty members had a relatively high frequency of tobacco use and the tobacco issue did not have sufficient content in the education programs. Promisingly, the majority of the medical faculty members were in a supportive attitude for comprehensive tobacco control education.