A recent study reveals that one third of all patients seeking treatment at the emergency departments in the hospital are smokers. It is a much higher rate than the rest of the population.

The study was conducted by emergency registrar Abigail Lynch and emergency physician Paul Quigley. He examined over 500 patients at Wellington Hospital’s emergency department over six days in August last year.

About 33.1 percent of the total number of patients was found to be seeking treatment were smokers in comparison to 20.7 percent of the New Zealand population.

74.9 percent of the smokers surveyed that they wanted to quit, said Dr Lynch. Out of these, 76.3 percent took a quit pack and displayed an interest in receiving emergency department-based quitting advice.

Studies done recently have shown that patients have a higher chance to quit smoking with counseling from doctors, especially those ones who use emergency departments for most of their routine health care.

Dr Lynch added, “Seventy-two patients were not registered with a GP and a significant proportion of these patients smoke and would like to quit.”