For this cross-sectional study, a self-administered online questionnaire-based survey was conducted, between April and October 2019, among a group of pulmonologists who were members of the Turkish Thoracic Society. The TTS is an organization for healthcare professionals, akin to various pulmonology associations worldwide, and most of its members are pulmonologists.
The findings of this study were produced by reanalyzing part of the data obtained from an overarching TTS scientific research project entitled ‘Knowledge, attitudes, and behavior of the pulmonologist members of TTS towards tobacco and new tobacco products’. The study protocol was approved by the TTS Scientific Project Committee. After a pre-test, the TTS secretariat emailed a link to a self-administered online questionnaire on Survey Monkey (surveymonkey.com) containing a written informed consent form to 2941 pulmonologist members of TTS. Weekly reminders were made to boost the number of participants. As we could not confirm if the e-mails were received and read by all these members, we estimated the response rate as the number of total completed surveys divided by the number of registered TTS pulmonologists. The questionnaire asked about gender, age, medical school graduation date, academic position, smoking status, the existence and the source of training on smoking cessation care (SCC), and about the presence of providing outpatient-based SCC. Outpatient-based SCC includes providing both counselling and smoking cessation medication in a dedicated smoking cessation outpatient clinic that is offered as an outpatient health service in Turkey. The categorical variables were dichotomized, e.g. academic position was dichotomized as having or not having any academic employment.
The WHO classification system was used to determine smoking status16 . Individuals who had smoked for at least six months in their lives and who were smoking continually at the time of the survey were categorized as ‘current smokers’. Ex-smokers (smoked for at least 6 months during their lifetime but not within the 6 months prior to the survey), recent quitters (smoked for at least 6 months during their lifetime but not within the 6 months prior to the survey), and never smokers (never smoked or had smoked for less than 6 months or fewer than 100 cigarettes during the survey) were classified as ‘non-current smokers’.
The findings of this study were produced by reanalyzing part of the data obtained from an overarching TTS scientific research project entitled ‘Knowledge, attitudes, and behavior of the pulmonologist members of TTS towards tobacco and new tobacco products’. The study protocol was approved by the TTS Scientific Project Committee. After a pre-test, the TTS secretariat emailed a link to a self-administered online questionnaire on Survey Monkey (surveymonkey.com) containing a written informed consent form to 2941 pulmonologist members of TTS. Weekly reminders were made to boost the number of participants. As we could not confirm if the e-mails were received and read by all these members, we estimated the response rate as the number of total completed surveys divided by the number of registered TTS pulmonologists. The questionnaire asked about gender, age, medical school graduation date, academic position, smoking status, the existence and the source of training on smoking cessation care (SCC), and about the presence of providing outpatient-based SCC. Outpatient-based SCC includes providing both counselling and smoking cessation medication in a dedicated smoking cessation outpatient clinic that is offered as an outpatient health service in Turkey. The categorical variables were dichotomized, e.g. academic position was dichotomized as having or not having any academic employment.
The WHO classification system was used to determine smoking status16 . Individuals who had smoked for at least six months in their lives and who were smoking continually at the time of the survey were categorized as ‘current smokers’. Ex-smokers (smoked for at least 6 months during their lifetime but not within the 6 months prior to the survey), recent quitters (smoked for at least 6 months during their lifetime but not within the 6 months prior to the survey), and never smokers (never smoked or had smoked for less than 6 months or fewer than 100 cigarettes during the survey) were classified as ‘non-current smokers’.
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