Frequency of Smoking Among Employees at a Tertiary Care Children Hospital, Karachi

Abstract

Objective:

To determine the frequency of smokers among employees atNational Institute of Child Health,(NICH) Karachi.

Subjects and Methods:

Total no. of 150 employees from NICH (including doctors, paramedics, administrationstaff, security staff, account staff, house keeping staff and others) participated in the study after givingverbal consent. A self-administered pre-coded proforma was used as an instrument to collect the information.

Results:

A total no. of 150 health care professionals and others participated in the study. There were 111 (74%)males, 39(26%) were females. The male to female ratio was 1:2.8. No female was found to be a smokerin our setting. 14.6% of smokers were in between 25-36 years of age. Frequency of smoking was found tobe high in both Matric and MBBS categories i.e. 7.3% and 6.7% respectively. The frequency of smokingwas found to be much higher (17%) in married males as compared to un-married employees (06%). Morethan seventy percent (24) had started smoking in between 12-24 years of age. Around 44% of smokers usedmore than ten cigarettes per day. More than 97% of the participants were aware of potential health hazardsof smoking.

Conclusion:

In our setting, overall frequency of smoking is still high (22.7%) in health care workers indicatedit is that in spite of awareness regarding injurious effects of smoking, the health care professionals do notrealize that smoking is one of the major causes of increase in morbidity and mortality due to respiratoryand cardiac ailments.