Table 4.
Reported barriers and challenges to quit smoking, interview findings (N=20)
| Themes and sub-themes | Quotes | n |
|---|---|---|
| Withdrawal symptoms | 14 | |
| Nervousness | ‘I started to feel a lot more nervous.’ (CS2, female, translated quote) | 11 |
| Sadness | ‘I used to cry. I cried. Do you understand, and sadness, I was sad.’ (FS10, female, translated quote) | 3 |
| Smoking addiction/habit | 9 | |
| Smoking addiction | ‘I mean obviously there is also the addiction to the, to the nicotine as well.’ (FS5, male) | 5 |
| Smoking habit | ‘Now, if I go out five times by car ... those are five cigarettes, because I only need to smoke while driving.’ (CS3, male, translated quote) | 4 |
| Having diabetes | 7 | |
| Maintaining diabetes management on quitting smoking | 5 | |
| Eating more on quitting which does not help diabetes management | ‘You start eating more. And in my position, I can’t start eating more, you know.’ (CS9, male) | 5 |
| Loosing glucose control on quitting | ‘The difficulties were ... I started to lose sugar control.’ (FS2, female, translated quote) | 4 |
| Smoking to cope with having diabetes | ‘At that time it was as if it was a taboo to be diabetic, that is, I used to smoke a lot of cigarettes to cope, so to speak.’ (FS7, male, translated quote) | 3 |
| Already feeling restricted because of diabetes | ‘Maybe I can’t quit or I’m not interested in quitting, emm because we are restricted in a lot of things, that is, we refrain from taking a dessert after eating, we refrain from alcohol because it raises the blood sugar.’ (CS2, female, translated quote) | 2 |
| Coping with sadness/stress | 6 | |
| Coping with sadness | ’I’d rather say, “I smoked a cigarette”, than fall into a depression or so, I would say, “a cigarette is enough, I don’t need anything else!”.’ (CS5, female, translated quote) | 4 |
| Coping with stress | ‘Yes, yes, stress, stress. Yes, the cigarette used to calm me down when in stress.’ (FS10, female, translated quote) | 2 |
| Unfavorable social factors | 4 | |
| Family members or friends who smoke | ‘I had some friends that smoked as well ... which made it a bit harder.’ (FS1, male) | 2 |
| Lack of support | ‘But then it was hard, I think, because I was on my own.’ (FS2, female, translated quote) | 2 |
| Having cigarettes available | ‘As soon as you buy a packet … you know you will eventually smoke them, so.’ (FS9, male, translated quote) | 2 |
FS: former smoker. CS: current smoker.