2 nurse images in a row? How’d that happen? This one was just too good. Anyway…A study from the UCLA School of Nursing reveals the tragic consequences of smoking on the nursing profession. The study was published in the journal Nursing Research outlines smoking trends and death rates among U.S. nurses and highlights the importance of pursuing smoking cessation programs within the nursing profession.
“Nurses witness firsthand how smoking devastates the health of their patients with cancer and respiratory and cardiovascular diseases,” said principal investigator Linda Sarna, D.N.Sc, a professor at the UCLA School of Nursing. “Yet nurses struggle with nicotine addiction like the rest of the 45 million smokers in America. We are concerned that nurses who smoke may be less apt to support tobacco-control programs or encourage their patients to quit.”
Sarna led a team of researchers who analyzed data from the Nurses’ Health Study, a historic study on women’s health. Launched at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in the mid-1970s, the study relied upon surveys completed every two years by 237,648 female registered nurses about their health, including smoking habits.
“The Nurses’ Health Study is the largest study of women’s health in the world,” Sarna said. “From a workforce perspective, however, the findings also hold a mirror up to the well-being of nurses, the largest group of health care professionals in the country.”
The current UCLA research explored changes in smoking trends and death rates among female nurses enrolled in the Nurses’ Health Study between 1976 and 2003, a span of 27 years.
Sarna and her colleagues compared the differences in death rates among nurses who never smoked, former smokers and current smokers. In all age groups, roughly twice as many current smokers had died in comparison to nurses who never smoked.
“Quitting smoking made a big difference in enhancing longevity, especially among nurses in their late 70s,” Sarna said. “Death rates among former smokers that age were 1.5 times higher than those of non-smokers, while current smokers were 2.3 times more likely to have died by that age than nurses who never smoked.”
