Nicotine Replacement Therapy and Electronic Cigarettes: Awareness among Medical Students

Background: Whereas the use of electronic nicotine devices, such as e‐cigarettes and nicotine replacement therapy, is on the rise, the awareness of these treatment options among health workers especially medical students is not well investigated.

Objective: This study was aimed to determine the knowledge and perception of the nicotine, nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) and e‐cigarettes among medical students.

Methodology: This study is a descriptive study in which the research is measuring the knowledge and perception regarding tobacco cigarettes, nicotine, NRT and e‐cigarettes, as well as observing the smoking rate in a given population simultaneously. A questionnaire was designed and applied to medical students in all 5 years. The sample size targeted was 200 with equal distribution among pre-clinical and clinical medical students. However, the number of responses obtained during the process of data collection was 184.

Results: The results of this study showed the knowledge and perception of the tobacco smoking hazards towards health and its substitutes had 46.0% and 53.6% on moderate knowledge levels and the majority 91.0% and 97.6% did not smoking among the preclinical and clinical respectively. The overall findings regarding opinion and knowledge on health risk among all participants are shown the majority participants 93 (76.9%) the tobacco cigarettes caused health risk. Regarding NRT, majority of preclinical 42(57.6%) and clinical 33 (69.8%) participants having low knowledge of NRT of health risk with a P value of 0.08 between the two groups. Also, majority of participants showed extremely agreed the smoking-related to the lung cancer, atherosclerosis in coronary and peripheral arteries. Majority of the participants in both preclinical and clinical agreed with the smoking addiction and agreed that facts on electronic cigarettes contain tobacco. Majority of preclinical and clinical students showed low knowledge of health risk and dependence potential.

Conclusion: medical students are not reasonable and overestimate the true hazards of tobacco smoking towards health. Additionally they are not knowledgeable about nicotine, NRT and e-cigarettes. Although, a large proportion of participants were exposed frequently to smokers, especially clinical phase students, they lack the knowledge and the correct perception regarding nicotine replacement therapy.