Provider Counseling About Secondhand Smoke Exposure for Urban Children With Persistent or Poorly Controlled Asthma.
Maria Fagnano, Stefanie Thorsness, Arlene Butz and 1 others
PMID 30064929WHAT IT FOUND
Pediatric providers counsel caregivers who smoke about secondhand smoke but often ignore non-smoking caregivers living with other smokers.
This gap persists despite similar exposure risks. Clinicians must explicitly ask about all household smokers and provide reduction strategies to every caregiver, regardless of their own smoking status.
Key findings
01Providers counseled 83% of smoking caregivers but only 56% of caregivers with no smokers in the home and 72% of non-smokers living with other smokers.
02Children of non-smoking caregivers who lived with other smokers had similar secondhand smoke exposure rates to children of smoking caregivers, with over 30% exposed in the home in the prior week.
03Multivariate analysis showed caregivers with no smokers in the home had significantly lower odds of receiving any smoke-related counseling compared to smoking caregivers.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
Exposure data relied on caregiver self-report, which may understate smoking due to social desirability bias. The study population was limited to urban, English or Spanish-speaking families with access to care, so findings may not apply to other groups. Counseling was assessed via recall and chart review, and low chart documentation rates suggest some counseling may have occurred but not been recorded.
Declared interests
The study was supported by the National Institutes of Health. No other conflicts of interest were reported.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume that non-smoking caregivers need less counseling. Children living with non-smoking parents who have other smokers in the home have secondhand smoke exposure rates similar to children of smoking parents, yet they receive significantly less clinical advice.