Determination of Surgical Patients’ Smoking Status at the Hospital

Purpose: Smoking is up against the surgical patients with postoperative complication risks. Therefore, they should quit smoking before 2-8 weeks to surgery and avoid that after surgery. The study was performed to determine surgical patients’ smoking status in hospital.

Method: As a descriptive study was carried out with 50 patients who were smoking and were hospitalized in Trakya University Research and Application Center Directorate General Surgical service at dates 01.09.2007-31.05.2008. In collecting the data, by the aid of a form developed by researchers was used. Data assessed using frequency, the mean and chi-square test.

Results: The mean time of smoking was 17.06 ± 14.65 years, the mean time of quitting the smoking before surgery was 11.78 ± 8:47 days 48%of patients perceived the risk of their surgery lower, 72%patients were informed about smoking and 8.3%of them were informed by the nurses in the preoperative phase. %64 of patients did not quit smoking while they were in hospital, 92%of patients did not know the damage of smoking for surgical patients. The relation of informed about smoking and finding the surgical operation low risky with the situation of not to be quitted smoking was assessed statistically significant (p=0,048, p=0,036, p<0,05).

Conclusion: It was identified that surgical patients’ hospital smoking rate is high, risk degree of perceived by patients and information about smoking are important. It was suggested that nurses should take more active and effective role to inform the patients about importance of quiting cigarettes.