Relation between smoking status of physicians and their enthusiasm to offer smoking cessation advice.

Are nonsmoking physicians more likely to give smoking cessation advice to their patients? To determine this, we sent a questionnaire individually to physicians in Tokyo. The average age of the 323 respondents was 59.8 +/- 12.9 (mean +/- SD); 84.8% of them were male and 21.1% were smokers. Among the respondents, 88.8% asked their patients about their smoking status, 79.9% advised smoking patients to stop, and 93.5% believed smoking cessation interventions to be necessary. Nonsmoking physicians were more likely to advise patients to stop smoking (85.6%) than smoking physicians (70.1%); the smoking physicians who themselves wished to reduce cigarette consumption or stop smoking were more likely to do so (85.0%) than those who did not wish to reduce or stop (43.5%). Moreover, more nonsmoking physicians seriously felt that smoking cessation interventions are necessary (31.2%) than did smoking physicians (6.5%). In conclusion, the smoking status and attitude towards smoking of physicians influences their enthusiasm to give advice to their patients against smoking.