Nicotine addiction in pre-hospital emergency care workers in Turkey: a cross-sectional study

ABSTRACT

Objective

This study aims to determine the smoking prevalence and nicotine addiction in pre-hospital emergency care workers.

Methods

The study, conducted between March-April 2022 with the participation of 318 pre-hospital care workers, is cross-sectional. To determine the participants’ nicotine addiction levels, the participants the Fagerström Nicotine Addiction Test (FNAT) was used. For statistical analyses, correlation, chi-square, student’s t-test, and analysis of variance (ANOVA) were used. The statistical significance level was accepted as p < .05.

Results

While 53.0% Of The Study Group Used To Smoke, 9.1% Thought That Smoking Was Not harmful to health. The mean FNAT score of the smoking group was 5.04 ± 2.92. Men’s FNAT scores (p < .05) were higher for those over the age of 40 than for those under 40 than women (p < .05). In the comparison made according to the participants’ occupations, the most smoking group was physicians (p < .05). The group with the highest addiction score among smokers was nurses (p < .05). A positive correlation was found between the years of employment in the sector and the FNAT scores of smokers (r = 0.146, p < .05).

Conclusion

Pre-hospital emergency care workers had a much higher smoking prevalence and nicotine addiction than the medical staff in other units.

KEYWORDS:

• Nicotine addiction
• pre-hospital emergency care
• health care workers
• smoking

Ethics approval

The study was approved by the Ethics Committee of Malatya Turgut Özal University Non-Interventional Clinical Research Ethics Committee (5–2022.58). Voluntary consent was obtained from the participants. Our study was conducted in accordance with the Helsinki declaration.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.