Smoking status of university teachers and education of the university teachers in service about smoking

Abstract
Aim: The purpose of this study was to determine the smoking status among Mugla School of Health Sciences in Mugla, the attitudes of university teachers towards smoking, education of the university teachers in service about smoking and cooperation inter sectors on education about smoking.
Method: A cross-sectional study was performed among Mugla School of Health Sciences teachers in Mugla University.  All  teachers (28) in Mugla School of Health Sciences included in the study. The participation rates was 92.8%. Data were obtained by the self-administered questionnaire. SPSS 11.0 was used for data analysis, and the differentiation was assessed by Chi-square analysis. p<0.05 was accepted statistically significant.
Results: The mean age of the teachers was 35.7 years, 19 (73.1%) of those were females and 21 (%80.8) of those were married. The prevalence of current smokers was 50.0% among teachers in Mugla School of Health Sciences. The mean initiation age of smoking was 20.1 years. Seventeen teachers (65.4%)  had at least one smoker among family members. 12 (92.3%) of the smokers were smoking in the teacher’s room which could be observed easily by the students. Nineteen teachers (73.1%) had the anti-smoking education received from official institutes. Fifteen teachers (57.7%) reported that they gave education to the students about the hazards of tobacco continuously. The univariable analysis showed; there was not a significantly correlation between teachers cigarette smoking, age, gender,
marital status, age of smoking initiation, parental smoking, having education about hazards of smoking (p>0.05).
Conclusion: The smoking prevalence was quite high among Mugla School of Health Sciences teachers in Mugla University. This data shows that teachers who should be model people for the students are not aware enough about smoking and its hazardous effects.
Keywords: University teachers, smoking status, education