Kit
Fact sheets on the Health Professionals Survey in the Eastern Mediterranean
Region
Overview
Egypt
Survey
overview
In 2003, 3384 health
professionals in Egypt completed the Health Professionals Survey,
which was developed by WHO in collaboration with the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention (USA), International Agency for Research on
Cancer, Emory University (USA) and University of New South Wales
(Australia), and administered in several WHO Member States.
Out of the respondents,
2889 (85%) were physicians, 328 (10%) were dentists and 165 (5%) were
nurses. The sample consisted of 76% males and 24% females. Survey
respondents worked in a variety of health care settings and 96% reported
having contact with patients. The average age of survey participants was
37 years.
Tobacco
use
71% of the survey
respondents stated that they had never smoked. 14% reported having
successfully quit smoking and 15% were current smokers.
The respondents who
smoked reported using an average of 12 cigarettes a day. Among 253
smokers who named a preferred brand, Cleopatra brand was the most
popular, named by 37%.
The proportion of smokers
among male respondents was 18.3% and 8% among female respondents. Both
ratios were much higher among nurses than among physicians and dentists.
The average number of cigarettes consumed by physicians or nurses daily
was about 12 cigarettes, while dentists who smoked reported consuming
about 9 cigarettes per day.
Knowledge about smoking
97% of survey respondents
agreed that smoking is harmful. This level of knowledge was the same
among smokers and non-smokers.
Leaders
in tobacco control
Health professionals play
two different but complementary roles in advancing tobacco control and
human health. First, as health care providers, they are uniquely
positioned to provide patients with information about the harmful
effects of tobacco use and assistance with quitting smoking, through
counselling, referral to other services and, where so regulated,
prescribing medications that are effective for smoking cessation.
Second, as a prominent, socially powerful advocacy group, health
professionals are uniquely positioned to impress upon governments the
need for and benefits of comprehensive tobacco control policy and
programmes that can assist smokers in quitting, prevent non-smokers from
starting to smoke and reduce exposure to environmental tobacco smoke.
Providing care
Health professionals in Egypt are clearly role models.
Thus, 85% of non-smoking physicians reported that they believed that a
physician who smokes is less likely to advise his/her patients to stop
smoking. 79% of physicians who smoke also identified this as a problem.
Thus, a majority of physicians, regardless of whether they smoke,
recognize the importance of health care professionals as role models and
access points for people who want to quit smoking.
Self-help,
counselling and medication for smoking cessation are available and used.
Uptake, defined as use where available, is high for all three
interventions. Although 30% of physicians reported using one of the
three, and 35% reported having none of the three interventions
available, the high uptake levels suggest that health professionals use
self-help, counselling and medication for their patients when they are
available.
Health
professionals’ assessment of their preparedness to offer smoking
cessation counselling is a powerful predictor of whether they will offer
it to patients. Among respondents who reported feeling “well prepared”,
over 81% used counselling. That figure was 70% among those who reported
feeling “not at all prepared”. In addition, health professionals who
reported feeling “not at all prepared” to counsel patients were also
more likely to use self-help (26%) and less likely to use medication
(4%) than those who reported feeling “prepared” for counselling (19%
reported using self-help and 16% medication).
Advocates for health
Health professionals
responding to the survey overwhelmingly supported banning smoking in
enclosed public places (97%), large-print health warnings on cigarette
packaging (44% of smokers and non-smokers, and 96% of former smokers who
had quit), banning sales to minors (97%), banning sport sponsorship by
the tobacco industry (93%), banning tobacco advertising completely (94%
of smokers and 96% of non-smokers), and making hospitals completely
smoke-free (97%).
The only policy action over which smokers
and non-smokers disagreed was significant price increases. 90% of
non-smokers supported sharp increases as a measure to assist smokers in
quitting and to prevent young people from starting to smoke. Sharp price
increases was supported by only 81% of smokers.
Conclusion
Health professionals in
Egypt have excellent knowledge of the harms of smoking. They identify
the importance of non-smoking health professionals as role models to
assist patients in quitting. With just over 1 in 6 male physicians
reporting that they smoke, smoking cessation support for health
professionals themselves could yield a double benefit: improved health
for physicians who successfully quit smoking, and a larger pool of
health care professional role models who can assist others to quit
smoking.
Despite almost 1 in 3
respondents lacking any intervention to offer patients who smoke,
physicians can offer a range of effective smoking cessation
interventions to their patients. Expanding access to medication and
self-help, coupled with improved smoking cessation counselling training
for physicians, would expand coverage of effective smoking cessation
interventions in Egypt.
More than 75% of health
professionals in Egypt, both smokers and non-smokers, consistently
agreed with the need to implement the elements of comprehensive tobacco
control. For all but price increases, support was virtually unanimous.
Thus, physicians in Egypt are well positioned to advocate for and
support the implementation of comprehensive tobacco control.