Problem/Objective: Tobacco use is the leading preventable cause of U.S death. Our objective was to determine the prevalence of smoking, nicotine dependence and readiness of smokers to quit with employees at a Chicagoland Hospital.

Methods: This analysis used a cross-sectional design and a self-administered survey. Data was randomly collected at a Hospital Employee Smoking-Education Fair on October 19, 2006. Volunteers were asked to complete a Tobacco Risk (Fagerstrom Test) and Readiness Questionnaire. Collected data were de-identified to comply with HIPAA regulations. The information collected was imported into Microsoft Excel for evaluation, and analyzed via SPSS version 13.0.

Results: 94 individuals (77% female; 62% Caucasian; Avg. age = 42.6+/- 13.7 years) participated in the evaluation. 32% of volunteers smoked. Hypertension (58.8%) was the most common concomitant disease state. 67% of smokers tried quitting once while 37% of smokers tried quitting two or more times. Average tobacco use was 17.8 +/- 11.4 years. The average nicotine dependency score was 2.6 +/- 2.7 (smokers) versus 0.2 +/- 0.97 (non-smokers). The average readiness score to quit smoking was 14.5 +/- 7 (smokers) and 0.85 +/- 3.2 (non-smokers). 70% reported receiving some smoking cessation intervention.

Conclusions: Managing patient expectations is important; not all quit attempts are successful. A patient's readiness to quit should be determined because it can impact treatment success. Newer treatments (especially agents with lower NNT for successful outcomes) will not be as beneficial if a patient is not ready to stop smoking. Local educational resources (Illinois Tobacco Quitline) can also help with tobacco cessation.