Knowledge, beliefs, practices and attitudes regarding the consumption of tobacco of students of First Year Medicine in Uruguay, 2009

Introduction: upon the new legislation to control tobacco consumption being enforced and the health care center's obligation to include the treatment of tobacco dependence within their health care services, the need to train future physicians in this field significantly increased. Objectives: to determine knowledge, beliefs, practices and attitudes regarding tobacco dependence among first year Medical Students, and to evaluate the impact of an educational intervention on these beliefs, practices and attitudes. Method: a survey designed by the World Health Organization was applied to first year Medical Students a year before and a year after the educational intervention. Tutors were trained on tobacco dependence and subsequently, these tutors worked together with the medical students by means of a problem based learning methodology. Results: 28.1% were smokers and 44.6% wished to quit smoking; 70.7% of non-smokers admitted medical counseling was effective for quitting, whereas 59.1% of smokers did not admit so (p = 0,006), and 79,75% of non-smokers and 64.8% of smokers (p < 0,001) emphasized on the importance of the medical role model. After the educational intervention significant changes were observed regarding the need to provide training on quitting smoking (p = 0,039), the counselor's role (p = 0,026) and knowledge that counseling contributes to quitting (p = 0,001). Conclusions: smoking significantly affects students' knowledge and beliefs about tobacco dependence. The intervention turned out to be useful to modify knowledge, beliefs and attitudes regarding the effectiveness of providing counseling and the need for medical doctors to be trained in quitting smoking.