Smoking Perceptions and Practice among Nursing Students in Kabupaten Kupang, Indonesia

Pingak, Meksy S; Miller, Caroline L

doi:10.31557/APJCP.2019.20.6.1709

Smoking Perceptions and Practice among Nursing Students in Kabupaten Kupang, Indonesia

Document Type : Research Articles

Authors

Meksy S Pingak ¹^{, 2}
Caroline L Miller ²^{, 3}

¹ Community Health Centre of Oepoi, Department of Health, Kota Kupang, Indonesia.

² The University of Adelaide School of Public Health, Adelaide SA, Australia.

³ South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute, Adelaide SA, Australia.

10.31557/APJCP.2019.20.6.1709

Abstract

Objective: Several studies have offered evidence of the importance of nursing-led interventions in smoking
cessation. However, other studies have found that negative perceptions and smoking among nurses were barriers to them
providing such interventions. The purpose of this study is to investigate smoking prevalence among nursing students
and the demographic predictors of smoking, as well as perceptions about their roles with regard to smoking behaviour.
Methods: A cross-sectional, self-administered, anonymous survey was conducted with all nursing students of the
Maranatha School of Health Science in Indonesia. Smoking status, individual and familial characteristics including
socio-economic status, and smoking cessation-related knowledge and attitudes were examined. Result: From the
population of 313 students, 197 (62.9%) completed questionnaires were included in the analysis. The prevalence of
current smoking for participants overall (25.9%) and males (52.4%) were similar to general population smoking rates
in East Nusa Tenggara Province (25.9% overall and 52% for males) but lower than national rates (39% and 75.2%).
However, the smoking rate among female participants (7%) was higher than national (2.9%) and regional (0.8%) female
smoking rates. The majority of participants were aware of smoking health-related risk (87.3%) and supportive of giving
smoking cessation advice (96.4%). In terms of seeing themselves as role models by not smoking at all, approximately
97% non-smokers agreed whereas only 60.8% of smokers agreed. Gender and being supportive of being role models
by not smoking at all were significant predictors of the smoking status. Conclusion: This study suggests that smoking
prevalence among nursing students is high. Despite most of the students having good smoking-related knowledge and
having supportive attitudes towards providing smoking cessation services, high smoking prevalence is known to be an
impediment to being effective in delivering cessation services. Personal smoking behaviour among nurses needs to be
addressed to encourage critical nursing-led smoking cessation interventions.

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