Since physical damages caused by passive smoking had been widely recognized, the Korea parliament enacted the National Health Promotion Law on September, 1995. The law specified nonsmoking areas in all public facilities, including hospitals. But this ...
Since physical damages caused by passive smoking had been widely recognized, the Korea parliament enacted the National Health Promotion Law on September, 1995. The law specified nonsmoking areas in all public facilities, including hospitals. But this law is not strictly enforces. The benefits of a nonsmoking policy can not be expected by the public. Even though hospitals should preserve a smoke-free-environment, most of hospitals are not under full controls against smoking. The purpose of this study is to identify factors related to smoking in general hospitals. Field study and surveys were simultaneously performed at study hospitals in Busan. 9 of 24 general hospitals were selected and survey was performed for 10 days by investigators during January of 2000. Nine hospitals had nonsmoking regulations, but only 8 hospitals had designated nonsmoking areas. Two hospitals among those hospitals had a nonsmoking committee. Patients` smoking rate was 35.0%, while hospital employees` smoking rate was 22.5%. The smoking rates of physicians, nurses, administrators and medical technicians were 45.38%, 0.85%, 31.73% and 40.70%, respectively. In the question of the severity of damages caused by passive smoke, only 29.2% of the smoking group considered smoking as a serous health risk, while 69.4% of non-smoking group did. Christian employee showed lover smoking rate compared to other employee did. Even though physicians should educate patients and other professions about smoking, physicians` smoking rate (45.4%) was higher than other professions. As a consequence, this study insists that general hospitals should enhance their nonsmoking policy and implement any practical policy for smoking free hospital environment.