Third hand smoke beliefs about personnels who work in medical school hospital

Aim: After using a cigarette or any tobacco product, residual tobacco pollutants remaining on surfaces or in dust are released back into the environment in the gas phase or react with oxidants and other environmental compounds to form secondary pollutants. This situation is called third hand smoke. Health workers are in an important position in the fight against tobacco. Therefore, our study aimed to measure the awareness of medical faculty hospital professionals regarding THS exposure. Material-method: Our research is a single-center, descriptive, cross-sectional, survey study. The population of this research consists of a total of 1984 people (238 lecturers, 503 research assistants, 779 medical personnel and 464 administrative personnel) working at Manisa Celal Bayar University Hafsa Sultan Hospital. The applied survey includes sociodemographic characteristics, questions about the smoking status of the person and his/her relatives, information questions about THS exposure, Fagerström Nicotine Addiction Questionnaire and BATHS-T scale to measure awareness of exposure to THS. Results: In our study, the cigarette and tobacco use of hospital professionals' rate was found to be 35.8% and the quit rate was 14.4%. Those who have not heard of THS before constitute 65.8% of the participants. According to the scores obtained from the Fagerström Nicotine Dependency Test, 43.9% of smokers have a very low addiction level, 28.4% have a low addiction level, 8.4% have a medium addiction level, and 12.9% have a high addiction level, and 6.5% were found to be at a very high level of addiction. Non-smokers' awareness of THS was found to be higher than smokers. When we look at the sociodemographic variables in our study, comparing the mean scores of the UESD Awareness Scale, no statistically significant difference was found between gender and marital status and the scale total score averages (p=0.316, p=0.168, respectively). Conclusion: It is important to increase the awareness of THS among hospital staff, who play an important role in combating smoking. It is important to comprehensively address the issue of THS, to emphasize details such as the fact that THS can harm the health of all individuals, ways of exposure, and to provide regular consultancy, especially to healthcare professionals. More studies on THS awareness are needed. It has been observed that as awareness of THS increases, the tendency to not smoke, to think about quitting, and to try to quit increases. For this reason, spreading awareness of THS throughout society will play an important role in the fight against smoking. Keywords: cigarette, tobacco, third-hand smoke, tobacco addiction, medical worker