The relationship of patient characteristics to physician delivery of advice to stop smoking.

To investigate the frequency of physician delivery of advice to stop smoking and patient characteristics affecting whether physicians deliver such advice, the authors surveyed 97 current cigarette smokers seen in two specialty and one general medicine clinic at a university medical center. Approximately two thirds of the smokers reported ever having been advised to stop smoking by their current physicians. In univariate and multivariate analyses, the presence of a smoking-related illness, the number of prior attempts to quit, and the duration of cigarette smoking were significantly related to delivery of smoking cessation advice by physicians. Knowledge of factors that affect the provision of advice to stop smoking can be used to enhance the physician's role in smoking intervention.