Investigation and analysis of female medical students' smoking status and cognition

Objective: To investigated the status of female medical students' tobacco usage,as well as their tobacco usage-related knowledge,attitude and behavior.Methods: With stratified random sampling method,a questionnaire to 398 female medical students from a medical college was carried out,and the findings were cross-sectionally studied.Results: Among the students surveyed,current smoking rate (5.0%) and former smoking rate (6.8%) were both very low.The current smoking rates in students of different majors was not significant different (P>0.05).However,the smoking rate and attempt-smoking rate of urban students were higher than those of rural students (P<0.01).There was a lack of knowledge about the danger of smoking in the female students surveyed.More than 85% of the students knew that smoking was the risk factor for lung cancer and chronic obstructive pneumonia,but only less than 45% of them realized that smoking was the risk factors for spontaneous abortion,heart disease and many other diseases.A majority of girls surveyed showed a negative attitude to female smoking,which had no significant difference among students of different majors (P>0.05).Urban students showed a more positive attitude to smoking than rural students,and the proportion of urban girls with the belief that it was cool and attractive for a woman to smoke was higher than that of rural students (P<0.05).Conclusions: Female medical students are obviously lack of knowledge related to tobacco.Medical schools should take effective tobacco-controlling strategy with the advantage of their own profession to prevent future medical workers smoking and guide patients to quit smoking.