Nurses could help cut smoking rates in China, according to UCLA-led study

China has a big smoking problem. Three-hundred-fifty million Chinese people smoke and 1 million deaths a year in China are attributed to smoking-related illnesses. By 2050, smoking deaths are expected to triple to 3 million a year. Smoking is such an accepted part of the culture that even 23 percent of physicians smoke. However, the smoking rate among the largely female population of nurses is very low, mirroring the general female population. Could nurses be the solution to getting Chinese smokers to quit? In a two-part study, published online in the Journal of Advanced Nursing, an international team of investigators led by Linda Sarna, interim dean of the UCLA School of Nursing, and Stella Aguinaga Bialous, associate professor in the UC-San Francisco School of Nursing, found that nurses can play a pivotal role in helping smokers to quit. But in order to do so, they need knowledge and skills. “Being smoke-free puts nurses in a stronger position to engage in smoking cessation interventions with patients than their physician colleagues who are more likely to smoke,” Sarna said. “But first we needed to understand how frequently nurses were trying to help patients quit.” In the first study, researchers surveyed more than 2,000 nurses from 8 hospitals in Beijing and Hefei. They found while 64 percent of nurses asked patients whether they smoked and 85 percent advised patients who smoked to quit, only 17 percent of nurses arranged for follow-up. Yet, when asked whether the...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news