Awareness, Attitude, Practice And Perceived Barriers Of Tobacco Cessation Counseling Among Dental Practitioners In Ghaziabad – A Cross-Sectional Study

Abstract

Introduction: Tobacco using habit is one of the leading causes of preventable death and disease globally. Dental practitioners play a vital role in preventing tobacco related diseases. The present study attempted to carry out a survey on the Awareness, Attitude, Practice and Perceived barriers of tobacco cessation counseling among dental practitioners in Ghaziabad. Materials and Methods: The present descriptive cross-sectional study encompasses 401 dental practitioners in Ghaziabad. A self-administered survey questionnaire was designed to collect the required data. The data were entered in Microsoft Excel spreadsheet and were exposed to frequency distribution and Chi square analysis using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences software (SPSS) 21.0v. Results: 75% graduate dentists and 93% post graduate dentists counseled their patients about the effects of smoking on oral health. According to the dentists, lack of financial incentives reflected to be another barrier in providing tobacco cessation counseling. The fear of damaging dentist–patient relationship was considered to an extent as a barrier in providing smoking cessation counseling by 85.07% graduate dentists while 84.9% post graduate dentists considered only to some extent about the same and this difference was found to be statistically significant (p≤0.01). Conclusion: According to the present study, dental professionals were aware about their role in motivating people to quit the habit of tobacco usage. But Dentists are facing many perceived barriers for tobacco cessation counseling so effective approaches should be made to overcome all these hurdles. Keywords: Attitude, Awareness, Counseling, Dentist, Practice, Tobacco Cessation