Trends in medical student use of tobacco, alcohol and drugs in an Irish university, 1973–2002
Section snippets
Background
Medical students are exposed to both active and subliminal personal health education during their undergraduate years. Several studies have examined the prevalence of smoking, alcohol intake or drug misuse in medical students (Brynner, 1967, Collier and Beales, 1989, Croftons et al., 1994, McAuliffe et al., 1984a, McAuliffe et al., 1984b) at a given point in time. The changing trends over time in attitude and behaviour that have developed in the population of medical students towards alcohol,
Methods
Using similar methodologies and survey instruments, three surveys of medical school students in University College Dublin were carried out over a 29-year period. A census of all students present in the relevant classes was taken. No prior sample size calculations were made but the anticipated recruitment of approximately 500 students per survey gave a confidence interval width in the region of ±2.5% to ±4.5% on point estimates of prevalence ranging from 10% to 50%.
Apart from the initial survey
Results
The socio-demographic characteristics of students surveyed are shown in Table 1. The proportion of female students nearly doubled between 1973 and 2002. In 2002 western country of origin was reported by 81.4% of respondents.
Trends in smoking practices are shown in Table 2. A reduction in smoking prevalence has occurred between 1973 and 2002 (western) overall (p < 0.001) and in both males (p < 0.001) and females (p < 0.01), to an overall prevalence of 9.2% in 2002 (among western students only).
Discussion
This study gives a unique overview of the changing trends in the lifestyle choices of medical students over three decades. We see a fall in smoking prevalence, a major increase in numbers of drinkers and amounts of alcohol consumed and a rise in the proportions offered and using illicit drugs.
While we noted a trend towards younger age at starting smoking in female students, one encouraging feature of this research was the significant trend towards reduction in smoking prevalence and reduction
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