For immediate release: April 25, 2003
For more information, contact Susan Griffith at 216-368-1004 or sbg4@po.cwru.edu

CLEVELAND—A mail survey to 917 Ohio dentists and 70 incoming CWRU School of Dentistry students found that dentists overwhelmingly support encouraging patients to stop smoking but are less sure about offering specific services to help patients quit.

Kristin Zakariasen

The survey points out that dental students and practicing dentists need to feel more comfortable helping patients to stop smoking, according to Kristin Zakariasen, CWRU director of curriculum evaluation and assessment and senior instructor in community dentistry. She reported some of the survey's findings at the annual meeting of the American Association of Dental Research in San Antonio, Texas.

Smoking is a risk factor for oral cancers, periodontal disease and aesthetic problems such as staining of teeth. Approximately 25 percent of adults smoke, and breaking the smoking addiction is one way to prevent disease, Zakariasen said.

The instructor said she wanted to know if dentists followed the U.S. Public Health Services guidelines to deliver brief tobacco cessation interventions in the clinical setting. The current guidelines were revised and published in 2000 with the help of health workers, including dentists, according to Zakariasen. Also, the American Dental Association and the Ohio Dental Association endorse efforts to reduce tobacco use.

With support from the CWRU and University Hospitals of Cleveland Comprehensive Cancer Center, Zakariasen conducted the survey in 2002 and had a response rate of 415 respondents, or 46 percent.

In asking incoming students 26 questions about their perceptions of the role dentists play in helping patients to stop smoking, Zakariasen said she wanted to find out what incoming students were thinking before their dental education influenced them.

"I hypothesized that they may not have seen their own dentists doing tobacco cessation efforts and that might create some preconceived notions about their roles as dentists," she said.

Zakariasen found that 100 percent of incoming students answered that dentists should educate their patients to brush and floss for good oral health, but only 97 percent answered that dentists should teach their patients about the health hazards of smoking.

Responses to 64 questions from practicing dentists reflected some of the students' reported answers. The numbers were highly supportive of generally asking about smoking habits and quitting smoking, but fell off to about 40 percent as dentists were queried about specific efforts-like prescribing nicotine patches-to stop smoking, according to Zakariasen.

The instructor also found that dentists reported that they were skeptical that patients wanted to hear dentists talk about smoking education. Other research has shown that patients are receptive to it, she said. While 63 percent of dentists reported that they do not currently display tobacco cessation materials in the dental office, Zachariasen reports that 86 percent of those respondents would do so if they had the materials.

The dentists also reported that tobacco education should be team taught by the dentist, dental hygienist and the dental assistant.

As a result of the survey, Zakariasen said she sees several immediate actions that can help dentists: providing educational materials and posters, continuing education classes and programs for the dental professionals that promote tobacco cessation programs and offering information in professional publications that highlights the problem and actions dentists can take to get their patients to stop smoking and listing referral programs that might help the patients.

Zakariasen said she also plans to use information from the survey to change the dental curriculum to include more information about how far dentists can go in assisting patients in their efforts to stop smoking.

Additional tobacco cessation education during clinical experiences will support efforts to get patients to stop smoking, while making dental students more comfortable approaching and talking about this sensitive issue with their patients and learning strategies to work with patients who are at different states of readiness to quit smoking, according to Zakariasen.

"We hope the efforts over the next couple of years will help students make the leap from dental school into their practices where they can talk about no smoking and tobacco cessation programs with their patients," she said.

–CWRU–

 

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