Missed opportunities for tobacco use screening and brief cessation advice in South African primary health care: a cross-sectional study

BMC Family Practice

Research Article

Olalekan A Ayo-Yusuf¹  Kabilabe NW Ngobale²  Olufemi B Omole² 

[1] Department of Community Dentistry, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa;Department of Family Medicine, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa;

关键词: Primary Health Care;    Smokeless Tobacco;    Tobacco Cessation;    Tobacco User;    Primary Health Care Clinician;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2296-11-94

 received in 2010-05-26, accepted in 2010-11-29,  发布年份 2010

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundPrimary health care (PHC) settings offer opportunities for tobacco use screening and brief cessation advice, but data on such activities in South Africa are limited. The aim of this study was to determine the extent to which participants were screened for and advised against tobacco use during consultations.MethodsThis cross-sectional study involved 500 participants, 18 years and older, attended by doctors or PHC nurses. Using an exit-interview questionnaire, information was obtained on participants' tobacco use status, reason(s) for seeking medical care, whether participants had been screened for and advised about their tobacco use and patients' level of comfort about being asked about and advised to quit tobacco use. Main outcome measures included patients' self-reports on having been screened and advised about tobacco use during their current clinic visit and/or any other visit within the last year. Data analysis included the use of chi-square statistics, t-tests and multiple logistic regression analysis.ResultsOf the 500 participants, 14.9% were current smokers and 12.1% were smokeless tobacco users. Only 12.9% of the participants were screened for tobacco use during their current visit, indicating the vast majority were not screened. Among the 134 tobacco users, 11.9% reported being advised against tobacco use during the current visit and 35.1% during any other visit within the last year. Of the participants not screened, 88% indicated they would be 'very comfortable' with being screened. A pregnancy-related clinic visit was the single most significant predictor for being screened during the current clinic visit (OR = 4.59; 95%CI = 2.13-9.88).ConclusionOpportunities for tobacco use screening and brief cessation advice were largely missed by clinicians. Incorporating tobacco use status into the clinical vital signs as is done for pregnant patients during antenatal care visits in South Africa has the potential to improve tobacco use screening rates and subsequent cessation.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© Omole et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2010. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.