Data from: Prevalence of tobacco use and perceptions of student health professionals about cessation training: results from Global Health Professions Student Survey

Abstract

Introduction: Health professionals who use tobacco may be deterred from providing cessation advice and counseling to their patients. We aimed to provide prevalence estimates of tobacco use among student health professionals and describe their attitudes towards tobacco cessation training. Methods: Country-wise aggregate data from the Global Health Professions Student Survey (GHPSS) on ‘current cigarette smoking’ (smoking cigarettes on one or more days during past 30 days), and ‘current use of tobacco products other than cigarettes’ (chewing tobacco, snuff, bidis, cigars, or pipes one or more days during the past 30 days) were analysed. For each World Health Organisation (WHO) regions, we estimated mean prevalence rates of tobacco use weighted by the population of sampling frame and aggregate proportions for ‘health professionals’ role’ and ‘cessation training’ indicators using ‘metaprop’ command on stata 11. Results: A total of 107,527 student health professionals participated in 236 surveys done in four health professions disciplines spanning 70 countries with a response rates ranging from 40% to 100%. Overall, prevalence of smoking was highest in European countries (20%, medical and 40%, dental students) and Americas (13%, pharmacy to 23%, dental students). Other tobacco use was higher in eastern Mediterranean (10-23%) and European countries (7-13%). In most WHO regions, ≥70% of the students agreed that health professionals are role models, and have a role in advising about smoking cessation to their patients and public. Only ≤33% of all student health professionals in most WHO regions (except 80% dental students in Eastern Mediterranean) had received formal training on smoking cessation approaches and ≥80% of all students agreed that they should receive formal cessation training. Conclusions: Tobacco control should take place together with medical educators to discourage tobacco use among student health professionals and implement an integrated smoking cessation training into health professions curricula.