High smoking rates among medical workers largely influenced by night shifts and overtime work
- Like the Sendai Nishiki-cho Clinic, N hospital (160 beds) is attached to
the Miyagi Public Welfare@Organization. We examined 254 working staff at that hospital with our
"Smoking and Health Survey" (composed using: Smoking Survey by the Ministry of Health and Welfare research group; Survey of Health and Smoking; Survey of Smoking Psychology). We were aided in the examination by the staff of Dr. Yokoyama, a non smoking outpatient physician of that same hospital, and Ms. Yuko Ito, hospital health nurse at the health control room.
- Survey period was June, 1998; the collection rate was about 84% (nurses - 84%, technicians - 90%, office staff - 87%, physicians - 48%)
- Smokers: overall - 30%, men - 50%; although these ratios are similar to the whole of Japan, women were several percentage points higher at 24%. In the 20 to 30 age group, men were 60%, and women 31%; both men and women exceeded the Japanese averages.
- Relation between smokers and their surroundings: the smoking rate for persons living with a smoker was 35%, with non smokers 6%. This is a statistically significant difference. (p<0.001)
- Relation with no smoking education in the past: Those having "no smoking education" were only 16%. Of those, 18% were smokers. And 30% of the 84% not having a "no smoking education" class were non smokers - no statistically significant difference.
- Relation with the working conditions (e.g. night shift, overtime work):The smoking rate of night shift workers was 36%, others were 22% (p<0.05). The smoking rate of overtime workers exceeding 20 hours a month was 55%; for those workers doing less than 20 hours of overtime smokers were 26%
>(p<0.01). Both were significantly high results.
- Relation of knowledge of smoking and healthy impression: Standard knowledge of the harmful nature of smoking did not correlate with differences between the smoking group and the nonsmoking group. On the other hand, in the group that wanted to be healthy, the smoking rate was in a lower trend than the group that did not want health.
- Conclusions
* Smoking rates of persons engaged in medical treatment and health professions is higher than the overall Japan rate.
* "No smoking education" is insufficient.
* Night shift and overtime work largely influence smoking habits.
* Healthy impressions are important along with knowledge of smoking.