Smoking behavior and attitudes of patient’s relatives in the pediatric emergency rooms- a multi-center study

Abstract

It was aimed to investigate the smoking behavior and attitudes of the relatives of the children in the ERs to determine whether current experience had any impact on the desire to quit. This study conducted with 300 patient relatives who applied to the pediatric ER of three hospitals in different cities between June 2019 and June 2020. Apart from the demographic data, a questionnaire consists of 18 questions were applied regarding participants’ past and current ER experiences and smoking behaviors. All data were analyzed using SPSS version 20.0 (IBM, USA) software package. It was determined that many (47.3%) spent more than 4 hours in the vicinity of ERs. Most of the individuals (58.0%) had waited 3 or more times in the ER previously. Besides, 59.3% had the idea of quitting smoking as they saw the patients in the ER, and while in the hospital, 44.0% wanted to have smoking cessation treatment. The average number of cigarettes smoked per hour in daily life was 0.61 ± 0.52 (excluding sleep time), but during the waiting period, this figures went up considerably to 4.32 ± 5.28/ hour (p <0.001). The rate of those who consumed more than 20 cigarettes was higher in those who waited 5 or more times in the ERs previously (p = 0.025). Patient relatives who were interviewed in the pediatric ER smoked more frequently. There is a need for smoking cessation clinics that can be integrated into the ER.