World No Tobacco Day 2005

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Kit

Fact sheets on the Health Professionals Survey in the Eastern Mediterranean Region

Overview

Qatar

Survey overview
 

In 2003, 603 physicians in Qatar 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.

The survey sample consisted of 432 (71.6%) male and 171 (28.4%) female health professionals. Most respondents (91.6%) worked in urban areas, with 3.8% working in suburban areas and only 2.3% working in rural areas. A large proportion of the respondents (96.7%) reported having contact with patients. The average age of respondents was 42 years, with 97% ranging between 27 and 60 years.

Tobacco use
 

About 69% of the survey respondents stated that they had never smoked. 19% reported having successfully quit smoking, 7% smoked occasionally and only 5% smoked regularly. Respondents who smoked regularly consumed 18 cigarettes a day on average. Those who smoked occasionally consumed an average of 10 cigarettes per day. Among smokers who named a preferred brand, Marlboro and Dunhill were the most popular, with each named by 30% of respondents. The proportion of smokers among male respondents was nearly twice the proportion among female respondents (14% versus 7.7%).

Knowledge about smoking
 

The great majority (98.6%) of survey respondents agreed that smoking is harmful, with some difference in the degree of assertion to this fact among smokers and non-smokers.

Leaders in tobacco control
 

Physicians 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 to assist them in 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, physicians are uniquely positioned to impress upon governments the need for and the 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.

More than 75% of the respondents agreed that health professionals should take part in fighting smoking and support banning the advertising of tobacco products. Most of these issues were supported by around 98% of respondents.

Providing care
 

Physicians in Qatar agree that health professionals should be and indeed are role models in their attitude to smoking. When combining respondents who "agreed" and who "strongly agreed", both smokers and non-smokers were nearly the same in their support of the issues involved. Viewed separately, however, agreement among non-smokers was stronger. The two groups differed most significantly over the assertion that physicians who smoked were less likely to advise their patients against smoking. While 78% of non-smokers "agreed" with this statement, only 44% of regular smokers did.

On the availability of interventions to help patients stop smoking, about one-third of respondents said that self-help materials and medications were available to them, while about two-thirds said that counselling was available. Uptake, defined as use where available, was high for all three interventions. The high uptake levels (71% for medications, 84% for self-help and 95% for counselling) suggest that health professionals use self-help, counselling and medication for their patients when these 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 “prepared” to counsel their patients on how to quit smoking, 80% did counsel their patients on the subject, 51% provided them with self-help material and 37% used medications. Among respondents who reported feeling “not at all prepared" to counsel their patients, only 61% actually counselled them, 27% provided self-help material and 26% used medication.

Advocates for health
 

Physicians responding to the survey overwhelmingly (98%) supported banning smoking in enclosed public places and using large-print health warnings on cigarette packaging. Similarly, the great majority supported prohibiting sales of cigarettes to minors (99%), banning sport sponsorship by the tobacco industry (97%), and banning tobacco advertising completely (96%). However, only 93% agreed to making health care facilities completely smoke-free. While 83% of non-smokers and 76% of occasional smokers supported sharp increases in cigarette prices, only 56% of regular smokers supported the idea.  
 

Conclusion
 

Physicians in Qatar have excellent knowledge of the harms of smoking. They recognize the importance of non-smoking health professionals as role models to assist patients in quitting. They also recognize the role models that health professionals represent to others.

When interventions are available, physicians 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 Qatar.

More than 80% of health professionals in Qatar, 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 Qatar are well positioned to advocate for and support the implementation of comprehensive tobacco control.