EFFECT OF A HOSPITAL NONSMOKING POLICY ON PATIENTS KNOWLEDGE, ATTITUDES, AND SMOKING-BEHAVIOR

Purpose: To explore patients' knowledge of and attitudes toward a hosp ital non-smoking policy and to examine changes in patients' smoking be havior before admission and after discharge. Design: Patients were sur veyed by mail 1 week after hospitalization. Setting: A 379-bed Boston tertiary teaching hospital. Subjects: Seven hundred twenty-six patient s were surveyed. There were 337 respondents, yielding a response rate of 59%. Outcome Measures: Policy knowledge, policy satisfaction, and s moking cessation assistance. Smoking status was assessed retrospective ly by self-report 1 week before admission and at the time of the surve y. Results: Bivariate and multiple logistic regression techniques were used to explore relationships among explanatory variables and outcome s. Knowledge of the policy was fair, although satisfaction with the po licy was high. Twenty percent of patients reported that they had quit smoking at the time of the survey; 53% of quitters said they quit beca use of the policy. Thirty-nine percent of patients reported receiving assistance from medical providers, and 88% were satisfied with this he lp. Smoking cessation assistance was not associated with quitting but was related to smoking less (p < 0.02). Conclusions: A hospital nonsmo king policy was well accepted by patients and may have had a favorable impact on patients' smoking behavior. Because intervention by health care providers was limited but appeared to be effective, smoking cessa tion assistance programs need to be developed and implemented in other hospitals so that these results can be generalizable.