Journal article
Addressing tobacco in Australian alcohol and other drug treatment settings: a cross-sectional survey of staff attitudes and perceived barriers
Substance Abuse Treatment, Prevention, and Policy, Vol.12, pp.1-9
2017
PMID: 28464898
Abstract
Background
Within alcohol and other drug (AOD) services, staff attitudes and beliefs are important influences determining provision of smoking cessation care. This study of AOD staff aimed to examine: a) current attitudes toward smoking cessation care; b) service and staff characteristics associated with unsupportive smoking cessation care attitudes, and c) perceived barriers to providing smoking cessation care.
Methods
Between July-October 2014, 506 staff from 31 Australian AOD services completed an online cross-sectional survey which assessed agreement with 6 attitudinal statements (supportive and unsupportive) and 10 perceived barriers to smoking cessation care in the AOD setting. Logistic regressions examined service (sector) and staff (age, gender, smoking status and number of years in AOD field) characteristics associated with unsupportive smoking cessation care attitudes.
Results
A large proportion agreed with supportive statements: Smoking cessation care should be part of usual care (87%), smoking cessation care is as important as counselling about other drugs (72%) and staff have the organisational support to provide smoking cessation care (58%). Some respondents agreed with unsupportive statements: AOD clients are not interested in addressing their smoking (40%), increasing smoking restrictions would lead to client aggression (23%), smoking is a personal choice and it is not the service’s role to interfere (16%). Respondents from non-government managed services, current tobacco smokers (compared to ex-smokers) and those with less AOD experience had higher odds of agreeing with unsupportive smoking cessation care statements. The most frequently identified barriers to providing smoking cessation care were: client inability to afford cessation medicines, insufficient funding and lack of a coordinated treatment approach (all 61%).
Conclusions
Overall, staff hold largely supportive smoking cessation care attitudes but perceive a large number of barriers to providing smoking cessation care.
Details
- Title
- Addressing tobacco in Australian alcohol and other drug treatment settings: a cross-sectional survey of staff attitudes and perceived barriers
- Authors
- Eliza Skelton (Corresponding Author) - University of Newcastle AustraliaFlora Tzelepis - University of Newcastle AustraliaAnthony Shakeshaft - UNSW SydneyAshleigh Guillaumier - University of Newcastle AustraliaAdrian Dunlop - University of Newcastle AustraliaSam McCrabb - University of Newcastle AustraliaKerrin Palazzi - Hunter Medical Research InstituteBillie Bonevski - University of Newcastle Australia
- Publication details
- Substance Abuse Treatment, Prevention, and Policy, Vol.12, pp.1-9
- Publisher
- BioMed Central Ltd.
- Date published
- 2017
- DOI
- 10.1186/s13011-017-0106-5
- ISSN
- 1747-597X
- PMID
- 28464898
- Copyright note
- This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
- Data Availability
- According to the original ethics approval regarding the data collected in the present study, the datasets are not publicly available.
- Grants
- Grant note
- 100128 / National Heart Foundation of Australia
- Organisation Unit
- School of Health - Psychology
- Language
- English
- Record Identifier
- 991241462202621
- Output Type
- Journal article
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