Abstract
Background: Tobacco use is one of the leading preventable causes of premature death, disease and disability around the world. The medical students who themselves use tobacco are unlikely to counsel patients against using tobacco.
Aims: To find out the prevalence and the pattern of tobacco use amongst medical students and to suggest suitable preventive and promotive measures to them.
Settings and Design: A three month cross sectional study was conducted among the male medical students of Rohilkhand Medical College and Hospital, Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh, India.
Methods and Materials: A total of 277 students out of 331 who were residing in the boys hostel participated and they were interviewed with regards to tobacco use by using a structured self administered questionnaire.
Statistical Analysis: The collected information was analyzed by using the SPSS 14.0 version software. The Chi-square test was applied.
Results: Nearly one third of students admitted to be tobacco users. Most of the tobacco users were aged between 21-30 years. The tobacco consumption was significantly higher among the senior students. Nearly 25.27% of the students admitted to tobacco smoking, while only 10.47% admitted to tobacco chewing. A higher proportion (42.39%) of the students had initiated tobacco use themselves, while 41.31% of the students were offered tobacco by a friend and 16.31% were offered tobacco by a senior. A majority of the students smoked just for fun, they were aware that tobacco was injurious to health and they wanted to quit tobacco use. About 14.13% of the tobacco users had suffered from a health problem.
Conclusions: The prevalence of tobacco use is high amongst the medical students of Bareilly. Being the role models of society and future doctors, they have an important role to play in the tobacco cessation and prevention efforts.