Establishment and operation of smoking cessation clinics in public hospitals in Shenzhen city

Objective To examine the situation of establishment and operation of smoking cessation clinic (SCC) sponsored by various medical and health institutions in Shenzhen city.Methods A survey with a self-designed questionnaire about SCC was conducted among all 59 public hospitals in Shenzhen municipality during June 2015.Results Of the 56 hospitals responding to the survey,78.57% have established SCC and for the hospitals without SCC,45.45% reported the lack of medical personnel as the main reason for the non-establishment of SCC.Of the SCCs established,55.81% were affiliated to department of respiratory medicine and 58.93% opened all workdays.Only one tertiary hospital has subsidization for medical staff in the SCC.The average service time of the SCCs was 22.3 hours per week.The majority of staffs in the SCCs were doctors and 89.29% of the staff worked part-time in the SCCs.For all hospitals with SCCs,23 (45.10%) did not assigned nurses working in the SCC.For all the SCCs,only 51.15% and 6.89% were equipped with body weight scale and carbon monoxide detector; 76.74% provided leaflets but 11.63% provided human organ models and video materials for tobacco control education.The average number of attendees of the SCCs during the latest one month was 68 and the number was relatively higher (97) for the SCCs in secondary hospitals.The majority of the SCC attendees were people visiting outpatient clinic (81.82%) and the hospitals' staff (70.45%).All the SCCs provided face-to-face counseling,but about one third (34.09%) of the SCCs provided telephone counseling and only 9.09% gave medicine treatment to the attendees.Among the SCCs,12 (27.27%) charged fee for the service and the service fee charged could be fully paid by medical insurance only in one of the 12 SCCs.Conclusion There were several obstacles for the operation of smoking cessation clinics in Shenzhen city,including insufficient facilities and the lack of policy support.The study results suggest that relevant measures should be implemented by governmental administration to promote effective smoking cessation service of medical institutions.