Smoking and other health-related behaviour among staff of a general hospital, a specialist cancer hospital and a medical research centre

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Abstract
A questionnaire survey of all employees of three institutions, a general hospital, a cancer hospital, and a research institute, was carried out in order to determine the extent to which health staff observed measures to prevent cancer, namely not smoking cigarettes and (for women) having regular cervical smears. The response rate was 65, 64 and 72 per cent in the three institutions but varied widely between different occupational groups. The findings suggest that health staff are less likely to be current cigarette smokers than the general population and more likely to have given up cigarettes. Occupations with a high prevalence of cigarette smoking include ancillary workers and nursing staff, particularly student nurses. Staff of the general hospital were marginally less protected against smoking-related disease than the specialist cancer hospital and both were markedly less protected than the cancer research centre. The same trend was apparent in relation to protection against carcinoma of the cervix. Knowledge of specific patients with lung cancer or cervix cancer appeared to act as an incentive towards preventive action and the same may be true to some extent about non-specific knowledge that lung cancer was caused by smoking.

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