Somewhere between 12% and 24% of people working in health care smoke, according to new data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In surveys of working adults, the smoking rate in the "health care and social assistance" industry was 16%, lower than the 19% rate for U.S. adults as a whole. Stratified by occupation, 12% of health-care practitioners and technical workers and 24% of health-care support workers smoked.
I’m always a bit flabbergasted when I see attendees smoking outside of medical conferences that I cover. There’s always a handful of them, but if I walk quickly enough I can get through the smoke and into the conference center without gasping for air.
Photo Sherry Boschert/EGMN
When I covered the European Society of Cardiology Congress recently, however, the experience was breathtaking. Literally. Everyone walked the same route from the train station to the one main entrance, with smokers trying to squeeze in a pungent French smoke between the two.
Dr. Nicolas Danchin of Paris presented a study on how to improve mortality rates in patients who are on optimal medical therapy after having a heart attack, and one of the strategies he emphasized was the need for physicians to be “relentless” in encouraging patients (and colleagues?) to stop smoking. After two weeks of dining at Parisian cafes and restaurants with clouds of smoke wafting in from the outside tables, I can appreciate the challenges ahead for cardiologists who champion smoking cessation.
Among Europeans, approximately 30% of French residents smoked in 2005, and 17 European countries had rates that high or higher. In the U.S., a 21% smoking rate in 2005 declined only slightly to the 19% rate in 2010, the CDC says.
Granted, the U.S. is years ahead of Europe in regulations and programs to limit smoking. California banned smoking in workplaces in 1995. France followed suit in 2007.
The U.S. efforts are paying off. The California Department of Public Health conducted stings and found that only 6% of stores sold cigarettes to minors in 2011, the lowest rate in 15 years, the Bay Citizen reports. The CDC also recently reported that lung cancer incidences declined for men in 35 states and for women in 6 states from 1999 to 2008. The greatest drops were seen in Western states with the lowest smoking prevalence and highest ratios of former smokers to ever smokers.
The payoffs for stop-smoking efforts are clear. But the relatively stagnant U.S. smoking rate, the higher European rates, and the still impressive percentages of health care workers who smoke show how far we have yet to go.
n --by Sherry Boschert (@sherryboschert on Twitter)