The prevalence of smoking among medical students

Abstract

Objective: We revealed the prevalence of smoking among students of higher medical institution during educational process. Materials and methods: We performed a survey with the help of our own questionnaire "Prevalence of smoking among students", studied the causes of smoking; age of the beginning of smoking; duration; and frequency of smoking; whether the malicious habit caused somatic diseases and what exactly. 487 students of the I-V years of study were the respondents. Results: At the moment of survey, 38.8% of the students were smoking, 51.7% of them were not smoking. The average age when the respondents tried to smoke first was 16-18 years. 60.4% of our respondents had started smoking until they reached the age of 18. The main causes of the prevalence of smoking among students are: stress relief - 17.9%; difficult learning -9.4%; for pleasure - 8.2%; to keep company - 3.3%; of idleness – 2.5%; it's fashionable - 0.8%. Duration of smoking was: 6 months - 7.2%; 1 year – 6.4%; 2 years – 6.6%; 3 years – 3.5%; 4 years – 2.3%; 5 years – 3.0 % The question "Did your smoking cause somatic diseases?", the most of the students answered "no" (32.6%), which could be attributed to a short term of smoking, but 2.1% of the respondents noted that smoking caused cardiovascular diseases in them, 1.2% - a chronic bronchitis, and 0.6% - a chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Regarding the digestive system, 1.2% of the respondents indicated that they had gastroesophageal reflux disease, and 0.6% complained of gastric and duodenum ulcer. Conclusions: The average age of smoking beginning among medical students is 18 years, the prevalence of smoking is 38.8%. The main causes of smoking prevalence are stress and difficult learning.