Browsing by Author "Al-Soufi, Omar"

Dental students at the University of Helsinki answered a 25-item questionnaire during spring 2008 that investigated their alcohol consumption, smoking habits and knowledge about the risk factors of smoking and alcohol consumption. This allows one to estimate how well future oral health care professionals would follow the recommendations they give and how hazardous they consider the risk factors of smoking and alcohol consumption to be. In addition, their attitudes towards tobacco use cessation and their opinions on who is responsible for education on tobacco use cessation were elicited to determine how anti-tobacco counselling might work in the future. Current smoking was reported by 17% of the participants and current alcohol consumption by 90% of participants. The majority of dental students (92%) considered education on tobacco use cessation to be the responsibility of dentists/doctors. Fairly high number of participants (43%) reported receiving inadequate information on tobacco cessation during their studies. Dental students should be taught and encouraged early on to routinely discuss with smokers the impacts of smoking on health.