Abstract
Abstract
[Background] There exists no simultaneous research examin-ing actual conditions of second-hand smoke prevention meas-ures at a number of universities and knowledge and awareness of faculty members working there on them. Due to this, the actual situations of knowledge and awareness of faculty mem-bers on second-hand smoke prevention measures implemented at universities have not been clarified. Thus, we researched the current conditions of second-hand smoke prevention measures at medical/welfare related universities and knowl-edge and awareness of faculty members on them.
[Methods] We sent requests for cooperation to the research to the presidents of 21 universities with medical, nursing or welfare departments in Hyogo Prefecture and conducted a survey on anti-smoking conditions at 6 universities which agreed to cooperate. At the same time, we also targeted 861 faculty members at the 6 universities and researched their knowledge and awareness on second-hand smoke prevention measures. For the survey, we adopted the placement method utilizing anonymous automatic-recording questionnaires and conducted the survey from February to September 2011. The survey was implemented after ethical review by the university the researchers belonged to.
[Results] 502 of 861 faculty members (58.3%) at the 6 univer-sities responded. For analysis, we only used valid responses from 495 people (57.5%). According to the anti-smoking clas-sification, 3 universities (285 members belonged to) were non-smoking facilities and 3 universities (210 members belonged to) were smoking facilities. 73% of the faculty members at non-smoking facilities and 59.6% at smoking facilities properly understood their anti-smoking classifications. 21.5% of re-spondents from non-smoking facilities and 47.9％ from smok-ing facilities answered that they were exposed to second-hand smoke, indicating a significant difference (p＜0.001).
[Conclusion] Although medical/welfare related universities are supposed to have many faculty members with medical exper-tise, 30% faculty members at non-smoking facilities and 40% at smoking facilities did not properly understand their universi-
ties’ anti-smoking classifications. In addition, even at non-smoking facilities, where on-campus smoking is supposedly prohibited, second-hand smoke existed too.
