Intervention against smoking and its relationship to general practitioners' smoking habits.

A postal survey was carried out in June and July 1980 to find out if there was any relationship between smoking habits of general practitioners and their reported intervention against smoking among their patients. Responses from 342 general practitioners in London and Kent indicated that there was a relationship: general practitioners who smoked cigarettes (13 per cent of the sample) were less likely to advise or help their patients to stop smoking than general practitioners who smoked a pipe or cigars or who did not smoke at all. The survey also yielded an estimate of smoking prevalence among general practitioners which indicated that prevalence has continued to decline, and that fewer general practitioners are being recruited to smoking.