Cross-sectional Online Survey of Clinicians' Knowledge, Attitudes and Challenges to Screening and Co
Thursday, January 5, 2023
Posted by: Natalia Gromov
Gorukanti
AL, Kimminau KS, Tindle HA, et al.
Cross-sectional Online
Survey of Clinicians' Knowledge, Attitudes and Challenges to Screening and
Counselling Adolescents and Young Adults for Substance Use.
BMJ Open. 2022;12(11):e059019. Published 2022 Nov 22.
doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2021-059019
Objective. To
examine adolescent healthcare clinicians' self-reported screening practices as
well as their knowledge, attitudes, comfort level and challenges with screening
and counselling adolescents and young adults (AYA) for cigarette, e-cigarette,
alcohol, marijuana, hookah and blunt use.
Design. A
2016 cross-sectional survey.
Setting. Academic
departments and community-based internal medicine, family medicine and
paediatrics practices.
Participants. Adolescent
healthcare clinicians (N=771) from 12 US medical schools and respondents to
national surveys. Of the participants, 36% indicated male, 64% female, mean age
was 44 years (SD=12.3); 12.3% of participants identified as Asian, 73.7% as
white, 4.8% as black, 4.2% as Hispanic and 3.8% as other.
Primary and secondary
outcome measures. Survey items queried clinicians about
knowledge, attitudes, comfort level, self-efficacy and challenges with
screening and counselling AYA patients about marijuana, blunts, cigarettes,
e-cigarettes, hookah and alcohol.
Results. Participants
were asked what percentage of their 10-17 years old patients they screened for
substance use. The median number of physicians reported screening 100% of their
patients for cigarette (1st, 3rd quartiles; 80, 100) and alcohol use (75, 100)
and 99.5% for marijuana use (50,100); for e-cigarettes, participants reported
screening half of their patients and 0.0% (0, 50), (0, 75)) reported screening
for hookah and blunts, respectively. On average (median), clinicians estimated
that 15.0% of all 10-17 years old patients smoked cigarettes, 10.0% used
e-cigarettes, 20.0% used marijuana, 25.0% drank alcohol and 5.0% used hookah or
blunts, respectively; yet they estimated lower than national rates of use of
each product for their own patients. Clinicians reported greater comfort
discussing cigarettes and alcohol with patients and less comfort discussing
e-cigarettes, hookah, marijuana and blunts.
Conclusions. This
study identified low rates of screening and counselling AYA patients for use of
e-cigarettes, hookahs and blunts by adolescent healthcare clinicians and points
to potential missed opportunities to improve prevention efforts.
|
|
Email to a Friend